


the men with their hands inside

by kiranxrys



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Blood and Gore, Garak's dark past back to haunt him again rip, Hallucinations, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, M/M, POV Elim Garak, Past Character Death, Pining Elim Garak, Psychological Horror, Season/Series 07, enabran tain it's on sight, pre relationship garashir but they love each other okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27272740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiranxrys/pseuds/kiranxrys
Summary: Even in war, some crimes cannot go unpunished. Elim Garak still has debts to pay.A 2020 ST Halloween Horror Bang fic for the prompt: Garak becomes convinced that people who he's tortured are coming back for him. Whether or not this is true is up to the author.
Relationships: Ezri Dax & Elim Garak, Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42
Collections: Star Trek Halloween Horror Bang 2020





	1. waking the witch

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the 2020 Star Trek Halloween Horror Bang, based off the prompt listed above! The wonderful art to go with this fic is embedded in the chapter below.  
>    
> Apparently I just can’t stop writing from Garak’s POV, that deep psychological damage really just draws me. And the pining for Julian. That’s important too. Here you’re likely to find Halloween, horror, and Shakespeare references, because I just can’t helpmyself. Also a happy ending because, yknow, I’m physically incapable of anything else. Set in S7 somewhere before the final arc beginning with Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges. I haven’t read beta canon.  
>    
> Fic title from Little Pistol by Mother Mother. Chapter titles from songs on the B-side Kate Bush’s album Hounds of Love.  
>    
> CW: usual horror stuff, gore, descriptions of murder/violence (past), hallucinations and general psychological instability. If that's not your kind of thing, I'll be writing some lighter stuff soon!

_The vines_ [Chapter 2] & _In a garden, on Romulus_ [Chapter 2] by **[@mega-ringsandthings-world](https://mega-ringsandthings-world.tumblr.com/)**

*****

Garak’s quarters seem small today. It’s an interesting phenomenon – the way a mind can manipulate itself to such a point of unreasonable terror. He briefly considers pushing all of the furniture to the walls to give himself a little more space to breathe, but he can’t help remembering what dear Ezri said the other day about accelerating anxiety by acting on validating impulses. Irritating how she manages to insert herself, most unwanted of course, into these sorts of scenarios. Almost no one else in Garak’s long and rather solitary life has managed to be so insistently, emphatically intrusive. _Almost_ no one. 

It isn’t all bad news. So far, at least, he’s been able to avoid any embarrassing performances. He’s learned his lesson from last time – he is absolutely determined to keep this affair far from the Infirmary and his array of accidental friends, at least until he finds a way of divulging his deepest secrets without the theatrics. He _cannot_ afford to experience another episode at the moment. Cardassia cannot afford it. The old stone streets, the buildings with walls thick enough to maintain a dark cool in summer and ward off the winter chill and the desert marigold spilling out of their windowsills, will never know true peace until the day the Dominion is destroyed, its last ships slinking back through the wormhole while Starfleet officers, Klingon warriors and Romulan commanders clap themselves on the back and say _a job well done,_ as if nothing were lost at all. Of course, that is hardly the future _he_ predicts, untainted hopes aside. But even a victory only half as sweet will never be achieved if the capable lounge around being _anxious._

Claustrophobia. A remarkable thing. As with any other irrational anxiety, it ingrains itself so neatly into a person’s perception of the world, it becomes impossible to understand how anyone else can be without it. For some time, he was desensitised, but then he felt himself slipping. Failing. And if there is one thing Elim Garak cannot abide, it’s a professional failure. It’s quite amusing – the irony of the situation, that calling Garak a traitor and casting him away was the single action that ensured he would become one. He fulfilled the prophecy put forward by countless detractors in the past. He became the one thing he had always abhorred and feared.

Or perhaps he isn’t a traitor. Julian insists he isn’t, as does young Ezri. They would have him believe that his betrayal is only in the best interests of some imagined, _reformed_ Cardassia, a _new_ Cardassia without occupations or Dominion alliances. Well, they may not know Garak’s people as well as he does. He won’t deign to damage their sanguine Federation optimism by further foreseeing the inevitable decimation of the Cardassian system. The dear doctor would stand there, too polite to say _I told you so,_ the nasty truth of Cardassia’s corrupt inadequacy hanging in the air between them all the while. He might take it upon himself to be sorry, and that would be even worse. In the meantime, Garak can only hope to distract himself with continuing with that delicately embroidered _thank you_ sweater for Deep Space 9’s newest counsellor that he began work on weeks ago. Navy blue with flowers from her species’ home planet of Trill stitched with cream thread over the shoulders and down the sleeves. 

He’s not sure why he does it. Not to be _nice,_ certainly. Everyone needs something to fill the time.

Another day of exhaustive decoding lies before him. He’s just on the edge of locating the correct algorithm to translate this particular message – a transmission from a key Dominion base in territory where the Federation is gaining ground, sent to the main command on Cardassia Prime. Likely the details of what the forces there plan to do next in their struggle to maintain control. Two Starfleet officers died in the process of attaining the information. Garak has limited time. He can sense the warning signs. Small details the doctor drew his attention to a long time ago – feelings of being frozen, somehow unable to move as his heart rushes along so hard and fast that it hurts, his tongue seeming to swell up and fill his mouth and choke the air out of his lungs. He gets up from his living room chair, briefly examines his reflection in the mirror.

He sometimes struggles to recognise himself, these days. Not so much the surface appearance, which has changed little with the years and still reminds him disturbingly of the roots from which he grew, but the man who wears that skin – the individual whose unguarded speech seems to slip out so naturally, his former self so alien it feels as if those years happened to a different person. His memory is problematic. Ezri tells him it’s an _expected_ and _manageable_ symptom of his condition, having these uncomfortable stretches of blankness in the back of his brain, weeks and months that passed by without enough distinct events to be remembered. She tells him he must focus on being _present, aware of your surroundings_ to avoid it happening again. Garak isn’t the greatest fan of the present. He would much rather exist elsewhere.

“Why are you doing this?”

Garak jumps, reaching instinctively for a phaser that is not there. He turns and sees nothing. Just his quarters, as warm and dripping with shadows as ever, the screensaver on his computer on the far side of the room playing through its constant cycle of colour. It must’ve been someone in the corridor outside – the voice was quite distant, after all, and undefined. Or perhaps he simply imagined it. _Why_ are _you doing this?_ It’s a fair question. He can’t exactly say. To stop the Dominion. To prove something. To Julian, in particular. That elusive sense of worthiness, to find himself an asset rather than a bitter corruption. 

The room is too small. He may as well work from his shop again, today. At least then the Promenade is near. As is the Infirmary, in case he should have a nasty turn after all, or in case he… But better not to dwell on any of that. 

_No excuses, Elim. Stop this pathetic search for an escape._ There is no way out. He was raised for this, in one way or another. Built up from malleable children’s bones and soft skin to be some kind of eternal exile. He can and will survive it. Julian and Ezri will see that in time – all of them will. 

The corridors are strangely full of chatter today, even though few people seem to be out and about. It’s unnerving, to say the least. His hypersensitivity to sound must be back to haunt him again, undoubtedly. It reminds him of a long time ago, of walking down dark halls as people slid out of the way and whispered behind their hands, looking upon him as though he were a sort of grotesque spectacle. Paranoia. Maybe he ought to bring that up in one of his mandated _counselling_ sessions. 

He steps out of the turbolift onto the Promenade and wonders whether he’s crossed into a parallel universe. The place is in a _state,_ a mess more drastic even than the time it was turned into a tribble breeding ground _._ Perhaps it’s some notable Bajoran festival that only occurs once every seven or eight years. But no, these decorations have the distinct air of human tackiness. Streamers and paper lanterns, even a bizarre assortment of mangled fruits and vegetables lying in a pile on the floor. He almost steps on one by accident.

“Garak, over here!”

He makes out Ezri by a nearby pillar, buried under a mountain of black and glaringly orange party supplies. Jake Sisko is in the process of taking items from her bundle and affixing them to the walls – imitations of some animal he doesn’t recognise, ghostlike figures with overly-cheery smiles. Garak raises his brow at the model humanoid skeleton slumped over at Ezri’s feet.

“My dear,” he remarks, “what in the world is happening? Am I to take it this is the latest form of Starfleet-issue regalia?”

Ezri laughs, a little muffled by her load of decorations. “No, it’s Halloween, silly. Haven’t you-” She breaks off with a squeak, tripping on a prop that reminds Garak of that awful creature Chief O’Brien keeps in his quarters and falling forwards. Young Mister Sisko only just manages to catch her in time. 

“Oof, sorry Jake,” she mumbles through a veil of what looks to be imitation cobwebs. “I forget this body isn’t as strong as some of the other ones. I really should…” Her next words are inaudible and replaced quickly by a fit of coughs.

“It’s marvellous, isn’t it?”

Garak glances to his left, already knowing what he’ll find. Really, it’s too early in the day for this kind of mental torment. The doctor stands at his shoulder, immaculately dressed in the grey and black and depressing ocean blue of his Starfleet uniform, eyes shining with that candid, unreserved delight of his. It’s unusual to see him in such a good mood these days. _Halloween._ He can’t recall reading about that in any of Julian’s human novels. He forces himself to look away from the doctor’s charming face and back towards the décor. It is certainly… vulgar, in the politest sense of the word.

“Very striking,” he agrees conversationally. “What is it?”

“Well, it was Jake’s idea,” Julian replies, picking some cobwebs off Ezri’s face. “And the captain agreed. We thought it might be fun to celebrate Halloween on the station this year. It’s a- well, it’s a holiday from Earth, most popular a few centuries ago, but they still celebrate it today.” He frowns. “I suppose it started _off_ as something religious, maybe, but…”

“No, no,” Jake interrupts. “The point of Halloween is spooky stuff. You know, scary holomovies, ghosts, that sort of thing.”

“And traditionally,” Julian adds, “it’s an excuse to eat a lot of unhealthy food. Children used to dress up in costumes and walk around their local areas collecting chocolate and lollies from their neighbours. In some places, they still do.”

Garak stares blankly. “Ah, of course they do. Does this Halloween holiday of yours… celebrate anything in particular?”

“Commercialism, mostly,” the doctor answers. “That’s not very fashionable on Earth anymore, so it’s more about the aesthetic these days. But suffice to say Quark was very excited to get in on this _lucrative new enterprise_ of ours.”

“So I can imagine.” Garak uses the pretence of examining one of the nearby lanterns to look at Julian again, who seems to be having one of his better days. The smile on his face is faint but steady, and for once he _doesn’t_ look as if he was awake past three in the morning last night. More than ever Garak feels the tug to become closer, to at least have the comfort of the doctor’s touch beyond his infrequent visits to the Infirmary. More than ever, he reminds himself of the pointlessness of such thoughts. 

He made himself clear when they first met. He made himself clear during their time on the _Defiant,_ in that uncertain interim when Deep Space 9 was briefly Terok Nor again. Julian was kind enough not to turn him away out of hand, kind enough to not even acknowledge Garak’s embarrassing pretensions. It’s evident the doctor would much rather have anyone else. He would even rather be alone, as it seems. And anyone who knows Julian Bashir is well aware that social company is the very air that he breathes.

It does little to prevent Garak’s desires from lingering. They’re made no easier by distance, no easier by time. Like his baseless fears, the doctor has instilled himself in Garak’s life here on the station to a point of inseparability. And Garak wishes… he wishes to see Julian survive this war. He can do that from a safe distance. Safer for both of them, in the end.

“Don’t touch me.”

He jolts, looking around for the source of the voice, suddenly conscious of his body and searching for some accidental contact. It wouldn’t be the first time. Even after years of siding against his own people for the sake of the hopeless Federation and its allies, people tend to regard him with a certain distrust and dislike. 

“Garak.”

“Hm?”

Julian’s stares at him with an unreadable expression. “I asked you a question.”

“Oh, I _am_ sorry, Doctor,” he says hurriedly. “Please, do repeat yourself.”

“I asked whether you were busy right now.”

“About to be, I’m afraid,” he replies. “The work of a, _ahem_ , outcast _spy_ is never done.”

“That’s a shame,” Julian says, and offers nothing more.

“Okay, I think we’re ready for lights!” Jake announces. “Nog! Whenever you’re ready!”

The Promenade descends into darkness. Garak’s stomach drops. A long way away, somebody screams.

He’s grabbing at empty air, trying to find something to hold onto as the whole station spins in blackness and the screaming goes on and on, ringing in his ears like an alarm. He can feel his airway closing off, choking him, and there’s a terrible sense of icy pressure between his eyes like Cardassia’s desert winter winds. Something white sparks to life in his line of sight. A skull. It stares at him with gaping black holes where the eyes should be. The distant scream falters, falling into agonised sobs. Almost like a child crying. Garak stumbles back, his gaze drawn to the right. A figure strides by, as if unaffected by the darkness. 

They turn their head to meet his eyes.

_Aren’t you enjoying yourself?_

Someone takes Garak’s hand and squeezes tight.

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_

“Garak, is something wrong?”

The lights seem to be brighter now. Julian’s head is surrounded by a halo of the warm amber glow, the side of his face caught in a gleam of equally vivid purple light. Garak holds his breath, listening out for the child’s sobs, but all he hears are excited whispers and Ezri saying something he can’t quite seem to make out. 

“Is it a claustrophobic attack?” Julian presses, letting go of his hand. His wrist, really. It was only a gesture of polite, friendly concern. “That doesn’t happen on the Promenade, not usually.” Julian frowns. “Was it the lights? I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to warn you – they’re only going to be like this for an hour each day leading up to Halloween. But if it’s too much I can ask Jake and Nog to change them, I’m sure they’d understand – it _is_ a bit extreme, I know, though…” He trails off. 

Garak breathes in, the oxygen flooding his brain and dizzying him again. He casts his gaze across the Promenade. Some of the emergency lighting along the floor is on to show the way, the rest is an atmospheric amalgamation of lanterns and luminescent decorations. A Halloween display. How charming.

“My dear doctor,” he replies, feeling far away, “I couldn’t possibly imagine what you mean.”

“Not this again, Garak,” Julian sighs. “Do you want to talk to Ezri about it instead? I’d understand-”

_“Doctor,”_ he interrupts. His hands are shaking. “I am- _fine._ Now, I must return to my work, as, I am sure, must you.” He doesn’t wait to give Julian the chance to respond – he’ll only say something irritating and _kind,_ and Garak needs space, needs air. Needs to be sure it was only the darkness that distorted reality.

He pauses just outside the door of the security office, a faint roar in his ears like the wind is blowing. But that is impossible on a space station. 

“Can I help you with something?”

The Constable sits behind his desk, as stiff and stony-faced as ever. _You don’t want it to end, do you?_

“Oh, no,” he answers, fingers twitching. “No, no assassination attempts today, I fear.” His attempt at a smile is weak and barely mirrored in Odo’s dispassionate expression. “You may tell the Captain I am close to decoding the latest Dominion message. It should be in his hands by the end of the day.”

Odo nods curtly. “I’ll let him know.”

_It must fill you with pride._

Garak only feels ill.

*

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Julian always insists on quoting it as _heavy is the head,_ despite the fact those two concepts are distinctly different and according to the original text _his_ version is the obvious misquote. Uneasy implies a threat, some uncertainty in the crown-wearer’s grasp on power. It’s a constant fear, where heaviness is a lingering depression. Garak did not diligently read the complete works of William Shakespeare just to have the doctor paraphrase with such inaccuracy to his face. _It’s only a saying, Garak._ Well, he likes Shakespeare’s version better. Its unnerving nature is an inspiration. 

Garak’s head is uneasy. He can barely remember a time when it was more uneasy than it is now. A usurper in the vein of King Henry IV, he was born into no divine right, condemned to a perpetual fear of loss that lives on inside his tailor shop on Deep Space 9. Yet while Henry died at peace, reassured, his reign willingly passed on to a worthy successor in his son, Garak was given no such ending. No, he was forced on in life without his crown, and despite its bareness, his head is still uneasy. Every moment of every day, waiting. _When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors._ He did like _that_ play, far more than the others at least. Julian had teased him lightly over tea and told him he just liked pretending he was the Macduff of their story. Garak would much rather he wasn’t – Macduff had his victory in the end, but he paid a just price for it. The blood of his family would always stain the memory of his triumph. 

The day ended hours ago, but Garak still lingers in his shop. Something about the Promenade outside is unsettling tonight – perhaps the unfortunately gaudy display of ghosts and other haunting creatures that stretches around it in a blanket of clashing colours. Captain Sisko received his decoding of the Dominion message two hours past. So why is he here?

He doesn’t have the patience for sewing just now. He feels unstable. Ezri’s voice is in his had again, her brow furrowed in sympathy as she tells him he needs to ground himself in his present surroundings. It’s why he can’t leave the shop. Nothing out there is familiar anymore. None of it is _grounding._ The colours are all the different, the lights are dimmer than usual for this time of night, and glowing in hues that cast an eerie glow over the shopfronts. Garak stands at the door, staring onto the Promenade as if looking into space. He has to get out. But there is nowhere for him to go.

_No excuses._ His legs refuse to move.

“Garak to Doctor Bashir.”

There’s a long, rather uncomfortable pause where his mind begins to jump to useless conclusions when his communicator chirps and he gets to hear the abrasive sound of sheets rustling followed by a _thunk_ and someone swearing under their breath.

_“Garak, is that you? Is there something wrong?”_

He opens his mouth and realises he has nothing to say. _Truly pathetic._ “No, Doctor. I’m quite all right.”

Julian lets out an exasperated sigh. _“Then why are you calling me in the middle of the night? Some people actually like to sleep sometimes, you know.”_

And that’s easy. He knows where to go from there. “My dear doctor, knowing your penance for staying up until questionable hours on a regular basis, I must say I _highly_ doubt you were asleep just now.” 

_“Well, what if I had been?”_ Julian grumbles.

“I’m sure you could’ve found it in your heart to forgive me.”

_“Hm. Maybe. Depends why you’re calling.”_

Out on the Promenade, something creaks faintly, and Garak’s grip on the pen in his hand tightens. “Would it not enough for me to simply wish to hear the voice of the enigmatic Doctor Julian Bashir?”

_“Very funny, Garak.”_ For a moment, the silence lingers. _“If you want to hear my voice,”_ Julian says, tone laced with the faintest undercurrent of hurt that Garak hears like a roar in the oppressive quiet of his shop, _“why don’t you just talk to me during the day? You know, in person?”_ Perhaps there’s an implication in that question. Garak does not have the same time for the doctor as he used to. There are reasons for that – war, namely. Unwelcome ghosts. The pure humiliation of Garak’s ridiculous, unrequited feelings that threaten to break out in a slip of his frayed state of mind. It’s best to keep his distance. Julian has friends, Garak does well enough without them.

“My sincerest apologies that recent events have kept me from our usual lunchtime encounters,” he replies, hyperbolically sweet to hide the truth in his words. “The most pressing concern of mine was dealt with today, fortunately.”

_“I’m glad to hear it, you need a break from all this stress. What about lunch tomorrow, if you’ve got the time?”_ The tinge of hope to his voice reminds Garak so distinctly of the Doctor Bashir he knew when they first met, he is lost for a reply. Touching his commbadge to make sure it’s secure, he steps out the front door to his shop and carefully locks it behind him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the floorspace directly before his feet. It’s impossible to look anywhere else.

“It would be my pleasure,” he says. The back of his throat feels dry. “Though, if I’m not mistaken, tomorrow at lunchtime would be your weekly medical staff review.” Usually, he might not have pointed out the doctor’s error, but clearly lit in the amber glow of Halloween lights around him is the fact that if Julian cuts off the communication, something terrible will happen. It’s a creeping sensation, the kind he’s become accustomed to feeling over the years when something is wrong.

Someone is after him. It is the _only_ explanation. He quick-steps into the nearest turbolift and doesn’t turn around before the doors are closed and everything is quiet but for the faint mechanical whir. 

_“Damn, you’re right,”_ Julian is saying, interrupted briefly by a yawn. _“What about the day after?”_

The turbolift is worse. The turbolift is small. Garak can hear his own heart – in his ears, in his throat, giving rhythm to the ceaseless station hum. He can faintly hear Julian’s level breathing, and given the doctor’s gifts, he has no doubt his own harried, laboured intake of air is obvious. He could never hide such things, not from Julian. _You don’t look fine. Your skin is clammy and your pupils are contracted._ Except this time Garak _is_ in perfect health. There is no chip inside his head to blame. And no matter what dear Ezri attempts to impress upon him, it is nothing like the same.

“The replimat, then. Midday.”

He can see the doctor’s smile before his eyes as he replies. _“I’ll be there. Like old times.”_

And what a horrific thought that is. Old times, a thing of the past. A relic from before the war when they were at leisure to ensure weekly meetings, to talk about things like literature and history and… and _birthdays._ Before this war. Before a dead Cardassian girl, a dead friend, so _many_ dead at this point it’s becoming difficult to keep track of it all. He stands rigid in the turbolift until it comes to a shuddering halt on his level, struggling to open his mouth to speak.

“I will be sure to bring my copy of Damlac’s _The Veiled Tomb,_ in that case,” Garak says, stepping into the hall.

Julian chuckles softly and yawns again. _“I wouldn’t mind if you did, you know,”_ he remarks. _“It’s been too long since I’ve had something to argue with you about. Discounting, of course, your constant disregard for your own wellbeing.”_

“I fear that’s a matter on which we may never agree.” It takes some effort to choke out the last few words. Someone is whispering around the corner, and he shuts it out, even though the image seems branded into the front of his brain, the – _aren’t you enjoying yourself? You don’t want it to end, do you?_ That pseudo-skin peeling off in sickening wads of mangled flesh, the agony held within those dark eyes, Garak’s hands shaking-

_“As a doctor,”_ Julian says, and it cuts through so crystal clear that Garak sees his face instead, smile still a little boyish perhaps, and more than just charming. _“As a doctor, I’m sorry to hear it. But as your_ friend, _Garak… I wouldn’t have you any other way.”_

Garak takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His corridor is just around the bend. 

_“Are you all right?”_ Julian asks.

“Yes, I’m perfectly well, thank you.”

_“So long as you are.”_ There’s a long pause as Garak searches for the words he’s learned to say, anything to prolong this conversation, anything to keep the doctor with him for a moment more. He jumps at the sound of a door opening and closing somewhere distant in the hall behind him.

_“Well, if that’s all-”_ Julian begins, tone a little softer than before.

“Doctor, wait,” Garak breaks out. His voice is desperate. He spoke too loudly. 

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_ Yes, every night. Every night he dreams it, no matter how much of the medication Ezri suggested to help him sleep he takes, every single night gaunt eyes seem to find him on Deep Space 9, on Terok Nor, on the bridge of the _Defiant_ as the Jem’Hadar fire upon them and he catches the doctor’s eye in a suggestion of finality that seems to follow him long after the battle is done. Even on Cardassia and on Bajor, and places he has never been and only viewed through Julian’s facsimile holosuite productions – everywhere his mind ventures at night, the eyes seem to follow him; they are what he has been dreaming of.

_“Garak, are you sure nothing’s the matter?”_ Julian asks. Julian. In the replimat, perhaps, where they first met, older than he was then by some years but no less enchanting. He only has to think of Julian, of the smooth fabric beneath Garak’s fingertips as he felt the warmth of Julian’s body beneath the cloth, the warmth of Julian’s breath against his cheek as they huddled in the _Defiant_ ’s sickbay as the war raged on above. Close enough to touch, but not quite close enough to speak. If he squints his eyes, he can see the doctor’s slim form in the shadows before him, hear his words in that touchingly indignant tone. 

_You know, some people say that you remained on DS9 as the eyes and ears of your fellow Cardassians._

_I’m simply not going to walk out of here and let you die._

_Have you ever heard the story about the boy who cried wolf?_

_I bet they didn’t teach you that at the Obsidian Order._

_If that’s true, it’s a lesson I’d rather not learn._

_I have nothing to-_

_“Garak, can you hear me?”_

“Er- yes, Doctor,” he says hurriedly. He is at his door. “You were saying?”

_“Thank God, I was just about to call Security,”_ Julian sighs. _“You can’t cut out on me like that, Garak. I’ll only think someone’s gone and tried to have you killed again.”_

Garak hadn’t even noticed. “My apologies,” he replies. “Though, if it’s _any_ consolation, most of my enemies have been far too busy attempting to lose a war as gracefully as possible to consider dedicating resources to my termination, as of late.”

_“I’m glad to hear you sounding so optimistic,”_ Julian comments. _“You’re not usually so sure.”_

Crossing the floor to his tucked away bedroom, Garak focuses on the image of the doctor in his mind and sees nothing else. There’s a rattling in the walls. He despises darkness. He despises small spaces. He wants the wide-open desert plains of Cardassia, lit up with golden sun, radiating the summer heat. _What you’ve always dreamed of. Cardassia. Home._ But not like this.

“A temporary insanity, I’m sure,” he says as he locks the bedroom door with his own private two-factor authentication system and removes his shoes for bed. There is no time for anything else. If he isn’t beneath the covers in under two minutes, it will all go wrong. It’s a simple fact. The sound of the seconds ticking down fills the air. “The uh- unfortunate side effect of your saccharine Federation conversation.”

Julian laughs again. _“Well, I’ll let you get your sleep. Lunch the day after tomorrow, and on Halloween we – Ezri and I – we’re throwing a party in my quarters. You don’t have to dress up or anything, don’t worry. But I- well, we’d all love to see you there.”_

“My dear doctor,” Garak says, staring blankly at the ceiling above and seeing all the little grains that make up his world twisting and coiling around and forming faces, seeming to suck him in like a black hole, endless and blurring his eyes. “I would not miss it for the _world.”_

He does not move when Julian murmurs goodnight and ends the communication. He can’t. 

It will be as Mila always said, though. Everything with look different in the morning.


	2. watching you without me

“Mornin’, Garak,” comes the address from somewhere near his knee, over the buzz of mid-morning Ops.

“Ah, good morning, Chief,” Garak says politely. O’Brien frowns up at him like he’s looking at a maladapted photonic field regulator, a little more than usual of his gruff exasperation present. 

“You’re blocking the light,” the Chief points out. There’s a smudge of grease below his left eye, but Garak’s gaze is more drawn to the darkness beyond his shoulder – a tucked away compartment beneath one of the workstations, the kind of place a child might cower in fear. A small space. 

He moves out of the way. Operations seems to have escaped Julian and Ezri’s warpath of outdated Earth holidays, devoid of the gaudy decorations that haunt every other significant hallway and room on the station. Quark has already begun to advertise seasonal drinks in varying shades of orange, purple, green and black at the bar, as well as vaguely Halloween-themed merchandise he seems intent on selling off to an unsuspecting alien audience. _It’s a holiday after my own heart,_ Quark had said in the process of his early-morning haranguing today, and so far he has not been wrong. Except for the fact that Quark is something is a coward, and intentional terror seems to be one of the main tenants of Halloween. There’s some kind of abhorrent human film viewing taking place tomorrow evening in the holosuites. 

“Garak,” Major- no, _Colonel_ Kira calls from across the room. He must get used to her change in title. It’s been months. Such things slip a person’s notice during war. “The captain’s ready to see you now.” On cue, a pack of Romulans stalk through Sisko’s door into Ops, muttering amongst themselves. Whatever the captain had to tell them, it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

Ignoring the glares and sneers of the Romulan officers as he passes by, Garak steels himself for the comparatively cramped nature of Sisko’s office and enters. Sitting behind his desk, the captain looks tired. But then, he often looks rather tired these days. His office is in an unusual state of disarray – PADDs spread across the desk, random bits and pieces that impart a sense of disorder.

“Romulans,” Garak comments, almost conversationally. 

Sisko sighs. “Romulans,” he agrees. “I’m afraid these tactical talks aren’t exactly going in their favour. They’ll be on the station for several days, though hopefully their pride will prevent them from causing too much trouble. Let me know if they give you any grief.”

“They’d have a hard time outdoing the example of grief-giving set by the Klingons in my regard, I fear. No, Captain, Romulans I can handle.” Between them hangs a conversation had elsewhere on this station, an admission of guilt Sisko seems to carry with him sometimes even though the memory is already so distant, it feels as though it could’ve happened in another world. And yet, if not for what happened that day, there is little doubt in Garak’s mind they would all be dead. Romulans. A small price to pay for the freedom of the Alpha Quadrant, the survival of billions. He catches sight of a flash of something in the glass behind Sisko’s head, pale and formed from knife-sharp lines. “You wanted to see me?” he prompts. The air is so still in here.

“Right,” Sisko says, sitting forward in his chair. “I wanted to thank you personally, Garak, for the work you did yesterday. According to Starfleet Command, the contents of that message were ‘invaluable’. I’ve been informed the new offensive begins tomorrow while we still have the advantage against the Dominion in that system.”

Garak merely nods his acknowledgement. He would like to leave the office, but he’s certainly not going to make a scene in front of the captain. The last thing he needs today is to end up in the Infirmary again. Oh, the visiting Romulan congregation would _love_ to hear about that sort of thing. It’s just their kind of tasteless, snide humour. 

“This data rod has the latest intel Starfleet needs decoded,” Sisko adds, pushing the innocuous little thing across the desk. “Starfleet Intelligence said something about a universal frequency scrambler causing problems, but I’m sure you’ll work it out.”

“I’m sure I will.” He has no other choice, after all. 

“A lot is riding on this, Garak,” Sisko tells him. Their gaze holds for several moments, Garak struggling to keep the hand that grasps the data rod steady. The thing behind Sisko seems to be melted out of the glass, twisting and growing like a Changeling to form an entire being – a terrible being, more than a shadow, features defined and marred by agony.

The captain frowns, eyes darting briefly to the window looking out onto a sea of stars. “I forget who I’m talking to,” he says quietly. 

Thorns are pricking Garak’s fingertips, barbed flowers and vines growing up from the ground to choke out life, warm earth beneath his feet that seems to have gone dark and sticky, smearing red across his hands. He blinks and the office seems to shift again – when he looks in the glass, the stars shift into faces, into eyes. Beyond his own faint reflection is a growing shadow, returning from his dreams again, and there is blood on the secateurs in his hand. Blood splattered across his cheek. 

_I know who you are. Don’t try to run. I know who you are._

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_

“It’s a funny piece of glass, that one,” Sisko remarks. “Almost as if the Prophets themselves put it there.”

But Garak doesn’t believe in the Prophets, at least, not as any Bajoran or pseudo-religious icon might. That window was put there by Cardassians, Cardassians who paid not a thought to faith and revelations. These intrusive ideas are becoming intolerable. _Romulans._ Garak’s lip curls. His mouth tastes of copper. “I will keep you updated on my progress,” he says, slipping the data rod into his pocket. “In the meantime, good luck with our esteemed guests.” 

“Hm. If you have any advice from your _time_ on Romulus, I’m all ears.”

Garak wipes the secateurs on the grass, blending green blood with green stems. There is- was, there _was_ a reason he chose the gardens – Romulus is grey, so grey, and the only colour comes out in places like this. He wipes away the blood, stands and makes for the servant stairs in the corner of the courtyard, thinking vaguely of what to do next. Tain will not be pleased. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He reaches for the door handle and his fingers only find the edge of Captain Sisko’s desk. He can recall the final words, spoken there in the glade with the ocean of brightly coloured flowers surrounding them, breeds of plant the Romulans had stolen from the worlds they’d accumulated over the years. _You will pay for this._ Not bad, for a last line. 

“They’re a hopelessly honest people, in my experience,” he answers finally. “You would be hard-pressed to find a single Romulan who denies the fact that almost no Romulan ever tells the truth.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t get along.” It’s hard to tell whether he means that statement with any sarcasm or not. Garak smiles, for good measure, and refuses to look at the thing in the corner of his vision – the figure with gardening tool handles buried deep in its neck, blood dripping down to stain the carpet. It flickers in the mirror, in the pale moonlight, in the corners of Garak’s mind that he does not wish to touch.

“I suppose you’ve seen what my senior officers have done to the Promenade,” Sisko says. Apparently the conversation has moved on. A good thing. _Romulans_ is too tense of a talking point for the two of them. 

“One could hardly miss it,” he replies. 

“Have any Cardassian philosophy to share on the matter?”

The door to Sisko’s office opens and the Colonel strides through, a flash of light reflecting off the earring she wears. “Sorry to interrupt,” she says, pausing beside Garak before the desk. 

“Not to worry, Colonel,” Sisko greets. “We were discussing the Halloween celebration on the Promenade. Mister Garak here was about to share some of his scintillating Cardassian perspective on the holiday.”

“I was only going to say,” Garak says, “that I can’t imagine _Gul Dukat_ would have allowed it when he was the administrator of this station.”

Kira snorts. “You’d be right. Though who knows with him these days – according to Julian, cult-leading murderers to Halloween are like vedeks to the temple. Speaking of which, I had Vedek Iya complaining about the decorations at service this morning. I told him they’d only be up for another three days, but I don’t think he’ll be the first to take issue.”

“Well, you can tell any other complainers to take it up with me,” Sisko replies. “This may be a Bajoran station, but the community here is multicultural. Historically on Earth, Halloween is an excuse for a good time. And I think we could all use a good time right about now.”

“From what I’ve heard, one might have a difficult time arguing for this Halloween celebration’s deep _cultural_ significance,” Garak comments. 

“That’s what you’ve heard, huh?” Sisko cracks a small smile. “Well, let Doctor Bashir know that if he feels that way, he’s welcome to cancel. It was his and Jake’s idea, after all.” 

“Sir,” Kira says. “I-”

“Right, right,” Sisko sighs. “Sorry, Colonel. What did you want to talk about?”

Kira throws a grimace in Garak’s direction. “It’s the Romulans, sir.”

_“Already?”_ Sisko groans. “They only just left.”

“One of them was… _bothered_ by Garak’s presence in Ops,” she explains. “Odo _tried_ to explain the situation to him, but he wouldn’t stop going on about security threats to the alliance and how unconscionable it is that we let Garak just wander around like that. He plans on taking it up with Starfleet Command.”

“How charming,” Garak says. The dread is creeping up again.

“Plus,” Kira adds, “a Commander T’Aress has a cold. She’s now harassing Julian for refusing to allow her free access to the station’s medical supplies. Or, her bodyguards are. It’s a mess.”

Sisko drags himself to his feet, pushing various PADDs into a haphazard pile. “All right, I’ll come sort it out.” He meets Garak’s eye. “Romulans.”

“Romulans,” Garak concurs. 

He makes a concerted effort not to look in any of the glass as he leaves, but he can’t help catching a glimpse in the space-black reflective surface of Sisko’s desk. The ghost has high cheekbones, skin drained of life, eyes the colour of tar that seem to swim out in great pools that drown him, and all the time saying _I know who you are, you will pay for this._ Hours later before the local authorities – _I question your innocence._ And he can still taste copper in his mouth all the way down to the Promenade.

*

He should never have gone back into his shop. Not after yesterday. Not when the voices seemed to ring louder in the silence of the clothing racks, far more so than in Ops or on the Promenade. He can hear them so clearly they seem almost more than memory. No matter how many stitches he sews in, no matter how much fabric he measures and cuts, his mind refuses to stay still. He has to get this under control. It’s only his brain, again, only his memories. _Focus, Elim._

_Just focus._

He has been grinding his teeth so hard that his jaw aches.

Ezri Dax steps through the door of his shop, or- no, only the thought of her, reminding him to be _present, aware of your surroundings._ If he could never hear that phrase again in his life, he would be happy. The interior of his shop is grey and gold, littered with unused mannequins and scraps of fabric. One of Colonel Kira’s dresses he offered to mend for her after it was damaged in some kind of holosuite incident lies across the desk. The display in the wall shows a complicated jumble of half-nonsense Cardassian, mostly still obscured by the scrambling algorithm used to hide its contents. Ezri Dax is frowning, saying, _are we talking about your father again?_ She asks too many questions.

Tain is dead. What more is there to say of him? Ezri’s mistake – Julian’s mistake too, and most of the rest of them – is assuming any of it really matters. Whatever unfortunate side effects the nature of Garak’s upbringing may have had, he was raised to be a professional. Professionals are not people, or at least, not _entire_ people. Oh, they may have the faces and smiles and apparent personalities of people, but beneath they are too driven for those kinds of distractions. The only thing preventing Garak from descending into a useless, pathetic kind of creature is his professionalism.

The Obsidian Order, the Tal Shiar, the doctor’s mysterious Section 31 – all professionals. _The Obsidian Order fell._ Well, individuals make mistakes. Professionals do not have hubris, no toxic vanity to corrupt their foresight. Tain forgot that in the end.

He’s lost track of his surroundings again. He seems to have missed his usual lunchtime by an hour. And what does he have to show for it? 

His console beeps. 

_13:23 JB: are you busy?_

The doctor is truly impossible. One can barely get through the day without being on the receiving end of his badgering as of late. Garak reaches for the display to respond with _no,_ before remembering his immature infatuation with Julian is only fed by such desperate behaviour. He has to focus.

_13:24 EG: Yes. As you should be._

For a moment he thinks it’s worked and is _almost_ disappointed by such an instantaneous victory. 

_13:26 JB: sorry. stuck in meeting._

_13:26 EG: Your weekly medical staff review, I’m well aware. I can’t imagine why contacting me is appropriate now._

_13:27 JB: bored. nothing important happening anyway only supply updates_

_13:27 JB: already read them this morning_

Garak sighs and sets aside the PADD he was using, giving up on his decoding for a while. He wasn’t making progress, in any case. These methods of scrambling messages were never used by the Obsidian Order _or_ any of the many organisations they infiltrated – it’s some kind of Cardassian-Dominion hybrid of illusion, and he’s tired of looking at it. 

_13:27 EG: Is there no one else you can harass with this frivolous pestering?_

_13:28 JB: everyone else is at work_

_13:28 EG: As am I._

Up at the front of his shop, someone passes by close to the window, the flicker in the amber light capturing his attention. There are shadows beyond the glass – amorphous, looming sorts of things, and some of the darkness seems to melt through the glazed panes like water bursting around the seams. 

_13:30 JB: you’re talking to me aren’t you?_

_13:30 EG: For reasons that escape me._

_13:31 JB: sorry. just miss our conversations_

_13:31 JB: it’s been too long_

Gripping the arm of his chair hard for support, Garak tips his head back to allow himself more room to breathe.

_13:32 EG: Unless my memory is deceiving me, we last spoke only yesterday._

_13:32 JB: garak you know what I mean_

He jerks his chin in an attempt to snap out of it. The tic only manages to pinch a nerve in his neck and the incessant chatter – an obnoxious sound, interrupting every thought – coming from his right grows until he can hardly hear anything else. Some voices are distinct from the others. _Where were you at the time of the incident? I question your innocence. You will pay for this._

It takes some deal of effort to type out his next message.

_13:34 EG: Is there a reason behind your recent bout of camaraderie, Doctor?_

_13:34 JB: sorry_

_13:34 EG: For what, exactly?_

_13:35 JB: long story. I’ll tell you lunch tomorrow_

_13:35 JB: nothing’s wrong though please don’t worry_

Don’t worry. What a helpful sentiment. 

_13:35 EG: I never do._ And that’s a lie so comically blatant he’s surprised when the doctor doesn’t take the time to respond. Maybe he remembered he was supposed to be at work. So is Garak. Computer screens around him display the half-formed horror of his failure – he should have had these messages decoded by the end of the day, but at this rate of progress it will take a week. It wouldn’t have, in the days when he wasn’t so pitifully prone to anxieties and distractions. Deep Space 9 has done this to him, so has Julian. So has Tain, in his own rather twisted way. It was part of his punishment.

Garak sits back in his chair and attempts to think. He can hear whispers in the air behind him. He would go out onto the Promenade to clear his head, but the shadows are there. Enough of them have managed to get in already.

A soft chime. His eyes focus.

_14:49 JB: are you with someone right now?_

His breathing has become laboured again as his throat constricts. Half the shop is blanked out in a disturbing blur, and the presence that seeped in earlier has only grown. Garak’s arm jolts as he reaches for the computer. _Are you with someone right now?_ He can’t bring himself to look up to find out.

_14:50 EG: Why do you ask?_

_14:50 JB: actually never mind. see you tomorrow_

Garak wishes he could see him now.

He wishes more than anything he could see Julian, Julian with his bright smile and brighter eyes, Julian by whom some cruel twist of fate he seems to have become painfully tied to, rather than see _this._

He raises his head and the knife-stroke terror cuts right to his heart and stays there.

The Romulan stands in the centre of his shop, swathed in darkness and curtains of blackened vine – vines that protrude of its body in odd places, bursting out of the flesh as if it were earth as it sways on the spot. Its eyes are rotting in his face. Two half-decayed black cherries, oozing sticky drippings down his face and over its lips, stare back at Garak from the skull. And it is more of a skull than anything else. The skin has become so stretched tight over the bone the face could almost be carved from wood, pale and smeared with putrid blood.

Garak slides back in his seat. The Romulan opens its mouth and breathes in like metal scraping, an agonised rasp echoing through the shop as it sucks in air. Its throat drools more of the sticky insides, sliced open just below the chin, the flesh beneath somehow just as fresh as if it were cut through moments ago. He can only watch as the corpse steps towards him in a jagged movement, trailing blood behind it on the floor. The blood comes from its torso – uniform ripped aside to reveal its messy disembowelment. Green-tinted organs droop through the ugly wound, made in a moment of panic with precision, without thought of the pain. Garak can remember how the hedge sheers felt in his hands, heavy and cold. He can remember how the commander gasped for life with the secateurs buried deep in his throat, his dark eyes fixing themselves upon Garak as he lay in a bed of wildflowers and choked out in half-formed Romulan, _you will pay for this._

His body seizes up as the corpse reaches the other side of the desk, the light coming from behind giving it an ethereal glow. The taste of its rotting innards fills the air – even breathing through his mouth, Garak can taste it. The coppery sting of blood, the oversweet, sickly perfume of the flowers in the garden, the dirt in his mouth as he reached for the nearest weapon and struck, feeling the Romulan’s fingers tightening around his neck-

_I know who you are._ It says it without even opening its mouth. A spattering of blood slips down from the slash in its neck to tarnish the tabletop. Garak’s stomach turns. His chin jerks again and the corpse flits away into the shadows of his peripheral vision. He can still smell it, like fruit left out for the mould to consume. 

“I question your innocence.”

The murmur is so much clearer than the ones that came before. Garak gasps for air, collapsing down to the floor. The space under his desk is small. But at least there, he does not have to see the shadows.

“Computer,” he whispers, too afraid of being heard by the bodies to speak louder. “Time.”

_“The time is 1451 hours.”_

What is time, anyway? Its passing is misery, its coming is fear. There are fingers at this throat, and pale blades slicing open his stomach to stuff the organs full of daffodils and desert roses, and that voice ringing in his ears again with its rasping _you will pay for this_ as in the courtyard garden the world seems to come to a halt. His head sinks into the rising tide of twisting vines, slithering across him still slick with blood. 

_Focus, Elim._ He wanted to see the doctor. He will. He can see him now, moving about the Infirmary in his cloak of reassuring calm, years of blood that has stained that room removed through the wonder of chemicals to make room for the next wound, the next corpse. But when he calls out, Julian cannot hear him, and he is alone in the garden with the body by his side once again.


	3. jig of life

The light creeps in like an ocean tide inching its way up a beach. Beneath him, the rocky shore is cold and seems to seep a damp iciness through his clothes. A hand presses against his shoulder.

“Get out of there. It’s morning.”

Garak’s eyes blink open to light and shadow, strange shapes flitting through the edges of his vision. The doors open up to let fresh air through, giving him his first clean breath in hours and hours. Within the air was stale and tasted of rotten wood. Fingers brush against his neck, urging him to his feet. He scrambles out, startled and suddenly clawing for empty space. 

“Thank you, Enabran.” 

Although he can’t see it, the glare stings in the back of his head. Daggers for eyes. Or more like needles. They ease their way beneath the skin, injecting their whispers of doubt. 

“Don’t thank me.” 

Breath down the back of his neck. 

“Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders.”

Tain has a habit of misusing quotes from the literature of foreign cultures. Few Cardassians would be any the wiser, of course. He believes it makes him appear superior, referencing all these rich ideas even he does not truly understand. It’s fortunate his line of work doesn’t involve impressing humans familiar with their theatrical history, or things could be quite embarrassing for the head of the Obsidian Order. 

“I will not disappoint you again,” Garak promises. His own voice feels detached from his body, the words spoken by someone else. _Never again, father. Never let you down again._ He goes over the memory in his mind as he stands on the upper level of Terok Nor’s main promenade, feeling the little chip in the side of his skull shoot empty joy about his head. He goes over the memory as he crawls out of the closet and finds himself back where he started again. 

“I have a task for you,” the voice just behind his right ear murmurs, low and sly. 

Garak rejoices in the light, in the air. There is so much beauty in breathing. Tain never usually keeps him in there for so long. Or he didn’t, while he was still alive. _Tain is dead. Dead for a long, long time._ Then why is he here now? Garak could not mistake that looming presence, the shadow stretching above and over him, lighting the way through the halls beneath the cities of Cardassia Prime. The shuffle of his feet upon the floor is to particular, Garak must have heard it a thousand times. 

“Do you hear me?” The anger grows. Garak cannot afford anger today. He cannot afford another night in the dark. 

“Yes,” he answers, groping helplessly for support to keep himself upright. The room around him spins in a confused blur of colours – the only clear thing is the silhouettes, oddly defined and watching him with their cold glares. “Tell me.”

The lights lead him over slick floors towards a doorway. He can hear rhythmic chanting in the distance, slow and spoken in words too muffled, too alien for him to understand. He can see skeletons carved into the walls, or perhaps set there with intent after the flesh rotted away, their empty eye sockets following him as he goes. There’s a buzzing sound, an angry thrum, like swarms of hornets seeking out a victim. Vicious creatures.

The venom of white Rathu hornets is used by the Obsidian Order in many of its crueller operations. A concentrated version, at least. _The best torture comes from nature. It is without purpose, without intention. Its savagery is born of necessity._ The best torturers know they are only creatures, just like the rest. 

“What is it?” he asks, seeing the helpless mass trembling upon the floor. Its frame is unnaturally thin and starved – not starved of food, but starved of life. The bones that jut out from beneath the ragged clothes, the discoloured scaled skin, are useless weapons. Garak has never seen a more pathetic animal. It shakes and whimpers beneath its breath. Hyperbolic. That’s what this is. Some embittered demonstration. The chanting seems to grow.

A strange thing to hear, on Cardassia Prime. Religion is far beyond fashion these days.

Unless this is not Cardassia Prime.

_“Please,”_ the thing before his feet pleads. “Please, no more. Anything, anything.” It cranes its neck up like a dog to look upon him. _Not a dog. A man._ His eyes glisten with fear, with accusation. His lips curl with the fury of betrayal. Garak is certain he has never seen this face before, not like this, not here.

But if it never happened, how can he be remembering it now?

“Kelas,” he says coldly. 

The man is Kelas, and he is not. For every feature he recognises, another is off-centre somehow, or slightly blurred. The Cardassian man cowers as Garak steps closer, averting his gaze. The fingers brushing Garak’s shoulder tighten. 

“What happened to him?” Garak asks. 

Tain chuckles softly, in his usual manner. “You did.”

“Please,” the man begs again. “His eyes… not his eyes. _Please.”_ He scrambles away across the floor, leaving no trail of blood. There’s no wound to betray torture, there doesn’t need to be. The man – Kelas, he tries to remind himself, even though this picture of him is distorted – is twisted and tormented by terror. It makes him angry.

“Get up,” he demands, reaching down and dragging the shaking man up by his shoulders. He struggles but cannot escape Garak’s iron grip, fitting like he’s in a seizure of fear. _You did. You happened to him._

_You were brilliant._

“Go on, then,” the shadow behind Garak’s ear murmurs. “Finish what you started.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” the man sobs helplessly, and his voice is something different now – some _one_ different. “I told you everything. Everything.” He tries to pull away and Garak tugs his arm tighter around the man’s neck, forearm against his exposed throat. “Please,” the man rasps, agonised.

“Things just haven’t been the same since you left,” Tain remarks from the darkness. 

“I know,” Garak says. “I know, Enabran.” The world is spinning again – the world is nothing, it’s splashes of colour swirling without consideration, it’s the light burning his eyes. _His eyes, his eyes._ He wishes he could cut them out. He wishes Cornwall, husband of his king’s wicked daughter, would come upon him and tear out each one. Leave him blinded. 

“Well?” Tain prompts. “What are you waiting for?”

Garak tries to blink the room into focus. He feels as though he’s passing between worlds. He breathes in deep and catches the scent of Tarkalean tea, the sharp chemical sterility of medical equipment. When he lowers his chin, he feels soft curls of hair against his skin.

“I know this isn’t you, Garak,” the doctor tells him, twisting his head back to look up into Garak’s eyes. So close, but beyond Garak’s reality, beyond Garak’s touch. “Don’t- don’t listen to him. You didn’t do this.”

He wants to scream. Somebody _is_ screaming, somewhere. It drowns out the chanting and adds to the roar within his skull. 

“Didn’t you?” Tain says. “Look around, Elim. Look at your brilliance.”

_“Don’t,”_ Julian gasps. 

Bodies. The floor is littered with bodies. Cardassian, Romulan, human. Julian slides from his arms to crumple at his feet, and a girl is screaming, screaming over the corpse that has become her father’s – a Cardassian man, one whose name Garak has long forgotten. Or perhaps he only wanted to forget. 

“Father.” He turns around.

Tain is a corpse, too. It’s how Garak last saw him until now, after all. His skin has gone to lifeless pale grey, inflicted with decay and rot. His body is bloated, like a sculpture poorly put together by a hack artist. Darkness defines him.

_Be aware of your surroundings,_ Ezri Dax murmurs in his ear. Garak shakes, strikes out into empty air for anything to grasp at. Aware of his surroundings. 

This is not real.

There is no one after him, not this time. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tain’s mouth stretch open, abnormally wide and gaping. The first sign is a single slick line of dark blood, dribbling down his chin, down his swollen neck. Garak is frozen. His mind is just white noise, now, just an endless drone. 

_You were brilliant._

_Be aware of your surroundings._

_No one deserves this._

How wrong the dear doctor was.

Maggots are crawling from Tain’s unhinged jaw, sickly white bugs spilling out as the corpse gags and chokes on its mouthful of rot. They spread across the ground, a plague upon the floor of Deep Space 9’s festive Promenade. Maggots in hollowed-out fruits and vegetables, maggots in the eyes of skulls on the walls. Maggots twitching beneath Garak’s clothes, chewing their way under his skin to consume his flesh from the inside. 

“Garak, you’re acting like a crazy person!”

He wishes it could’ve been anyone but Quark. Quark was always there, before Starfleet, before his fall. It doesn’t help the disorder of memories within his mind. But better than Julian, or Ezri, he supposes. Better than their kindness.

“If you keep freaking out my valued customers like this,” Quark continues, “I’m going to have to call Security!”

“Apologies,” Garak hisses through gritted teeth. He casts his eyes about the bar, wondering how he came to be here. Halloween is visible on every available surface on the premises. No maggots.

No bodies.

“I’m here for a holosuite,” he says sharply. “Lieutenant Dax’s usual programme.” 

Quark makes a face. “Well, if you say so. You’ll be paying for it.”

Garak’s attempt at a smile is threatening at best. “I don’t doubt it.”

“You almost looked like you were sleepwalking or something,” Quark comments as he digs out the programme data from beneath the bar. “This war’s starting to get to people, I’m telling you.”

“But not to me,” Garak says. Not very intentionally. He doesn’t really feel like he’s thinking at all.

“Yeah, yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”

*

He can sense the wall ahead of him. Just ten metres from his face, trapping him in like the bars of a jail cell. It reminds him of those months of imprisonment on the station, though there isn’t much to be reminded of. It’s another blank stretch in his memory, with no definition to days or weeks, no clarity. Ezri offered to help him try to remember. She believed she could bring the details back, somehow. A remarkably ridiculous suggestion. If Garak had ever wanted to remember, he would. His mind is not entirely broken, not yet.

This will all pass with time. It has before, it will again. He’ll allow Ezri to talk him into foolish admissions every now and then, maintain a semblance of sentimental honesty between himself and the doctor, avoid making any more scenes. This morning was this morning. It can join the grey blur of all the other mornings in his mind. He does not live for the past, after all. 

_What have you done to him?_

Involuntarily, Garak flinches, head jerking as if caught on a hook and pulled. It’s starting to take a toll on his neck.

_Father, father please – just hold on, I’ve called for help, it’s going to be-_

With a small shrug of his shoulders, Garak allows that image to fall away over the cliff face and down into the pale void below. The girl goes slipping through time and space, still clutching the fitting body of her father. Or brother or husband. One of the three. It’s an odd moment for him to recall now. That night was like this morning. Better given to the blur than remembered.

Although he can still _feel_ the tightness of the space within the holosuite, it does do a good job of tricking his eyes and ears into believing the world is much wider. The cliffs are lit with golden sun that warms his skin, the breeze is gentle and almost lures him to the conviction that any of this is real. 

“Things are only real because we perceive them,” Julian had said once, over tea.

“You mean to say that reality is subjective?” Garak questioned coolly. “My dear doctor, that would seem to contradict your _often-professed_ opinions on morality. After all, in a subjective reality, your precious Federation would be something of a contradiction.”

“As if it isn’t already. But really, Garak, if anyone’s going to be talking about moral relativism, it ought to be you.”

“How so?”

He can bring Julian’s small frown back to the front of his mind so easily. “You think that out of all the _trillions_ of people in the universe, you just _happened_ to be the one to crack the code? That you’re the one who sees it for what it really is?”

“Not at all,” Garak had replied. “I make no false pretensions, Doctor. Life is a process of striving for reality, for objectivity, only to be denied it in the end.”

“But let me guess – you’re closer than most.” 

Garak smiled. “Who’s to say? This universe is without good and evil. That is _one_ thing they teach you in the Obsidian Order you would be wise to take note of. Whatever the temple vedeks may tell you, there is no reason for our existence.”

“Not inherently, no,” Julian said. “But that doesn’t mean our choices are meaningless.”

“What a delightfully… _Federation_ perspective,” Garak had remarked. _“When,_ Doctor,will you come to accept that you are at best infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. _Indefinitely_ unremarkable.”

Julian’s glare was hard enough to crack stone. “When I start feeling that way.”

“Your arrogance will be the death of you, I fear.”

“I could say the same of you.”

Gravel crunches beneath someone’s shoe. “What could you say of me, exactly?” That’s the difference between memories and reality – at least, whatever _reality_ is when seen through subjective eyes. Reality pervades. You can only hide in memories for so long. 

“Oh, nothing,” Garak replies, looking up into the light to see Julian, there before him in the flesh. He can tell that this is _now_ from the grey shoulders of the doctor’s uniform, where they used to be a rather garish blue. He doesn’t have to force his smile. “Nothing you need worry about.”

Julian looks him up and down once as if considering, then sighs and takes a seat beside him on the mossy rock. He sits cross-legged, fingertips of one hand running absentmindedly along the sharp edge of the cliff. Garak reminds himself that this being a holosuite, it is physically impossible to fall. 

The sunlight gives a glow to Julian’s smooth brown skin, reflects off his dark eyes. There’s something ever so slightly sad about him, today. Or maybe anxious. He perches perfectly still on the ground – a bad sign. Julian is never still, not unless he forces it upon himself.

“Shouldn’t I worry?” Julian asks quietly. “Garak, it’s almost 1300 hours.”

“Ah. I see. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.”

The corner of Julian’s mouth twitches. “If you tell me what’s going on. Why you missed lunch.”

“And if I told you I simply… _lost track_ of the time?” Garak offers. It isn’t even really a lie. He did forget to keep note of the hours passing since he entered the holosuite. He had told Quark not to bother him on pain of death, so time might as well have been meaningless, same as the blur in his mind. All except for Julian. Garak’s clearest memories of Deep Space 9 are all of him.

“Just promise me you’re not going to try to throw yourself out of an airlock again,” Julian says. 

“I believe that incident was humiliating enough on the first occasion not to warrant repetition.”

Like clockwork, Julian breaks into motion again, sighing and leaning forward to pick up pieces of gravel one by one and drop them off the precipice. He seems to be fighting the urge to look at Garak, staring hard down at the tiny shards of stone beneath his hands. Anxious, then. The sadness is only secondary. Everyone is sad these days, anyway. _Except for me._ That’s the beauty of the whole thing – Garak isn’t _sad._ He isn’t truly scared, either. The parasitical panic within his mind will die off in time, leaving him as nothing once again.

“Quark-” Julian begins.

“Is hardly a man worth your time, Doctor, if you’ll take my advice.”

Julian clears his throat loudly, ignoring the comment. _“Quark_ told me you had an episode on the Promenade this morning and that you’ve been in here ever since. I think his exact words were _like he’d seen a ghost or something._ And if I’m not mistaken,” Julian adds, looking at him now with all the altruistic concern that could be possibly stuffed into those two _infinitesimal_ eyes, “you’re wearing the same clothes today as you were when I walked past the shop on my way to work yesterday.”

“All this meaning…?”

“I don’t know,” Julian says. “You’ve been doing well since the last… episode, Garak. But if something’s gone wrong, I want you to be able to tell me. Me or Ezri – anyone, really. Just someone. It only exacerbates your symptoms keeping closed off.”

This is a sticky conversation. In the beginning, he might’ve found any excuse to leave. These days Julian would only follow him. “And what do you _imagine_ might have gone wrong?” Garak asks. “Another episode, as you put it?”

“I can’t reach you,” Julian says. “I never really know where you are inside that head of yours.”

“Nowhere _you_ would wish to be, I assure you.”

The place where Julian’s hand now rests on the ground is only inches from Garak’s own. The wind about the cliffs picks up at ruffles the doctor’s usually perfect hair, a single curl coming loose to fall across his forehead. Garak represses any urge to reach over and brush it back into place. He forgets, sometimes. It comes as a nasty sting when he wakes up in the morning, when Julian mutters something at their too-infrequent lunches that reminds him of the truth – whatever it is the two of them have, it is not _that._ Julian may indulge him with _almosts_ every now and then, but the fact of the matter remains the same. 

Garak allowed himself to become weak. Perhaps he should only be glad that Julian’s lack of affection meant he could not be weakened further. _You were brilliant._ He was, back in those days. Tain would sneer at the thing he has turned into now.

“I don’t want you to be there alone,” Julian tells him. 

Garak glances up, looking beyond the doctor to the rocky nook beyond and into the eyes of the man who stands there. He is not dead now, though he is a ghost. His figure is frayed at the edges, blurred among the shadows and the creeping vines. Tall, for a Cardassian, mouth frothing like a sickened beast. 

A hand touches his shoulder. “Is there something there?” Julian asks nervously. “I mean – do you see something?”

He blinks and the apparition seems to fade away into smudges of light and colour. “No, Doctor,” he answers. “Only you.”

With a small laugh, Julian withdraws his touch and turns his eyes away. If Garak didn’t know better, he would almost call the doctor _bashful._ It’s a rather dear quality he’s retained throughout the years – the ability to look so entirely unassuming and embarrassed by attention, as if amazed at even being spoken to at all.

“You’re just impossible, you know that, right?” Julian sighs. “It’s pure evil.”

_“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,”_ Garak quotes mildly. 

“Who said that?”

Garak hides a smile and turns his head to let the sunlight fall upon Julian’s face again. “I _believe_ it was Damlac.”

“Well, I think he must have been a miserable individual.”

“…Or was it Shakespeare?”

Julian groans.

“A miserable individual indeed. But if you had read either Damlac’s _The Veiled Tomb_ with _any_ degree of effort, my dear doctor – or your charming Shakespeare’s _Hamlet,_ for that matter – you would not have needed to ask.”

“I always preferred the comedies over the tragedies,” Julian says. “As for Damlac, I thought you were supposed to be lending them to me today.”

“I was supposed to be doing manythings today.”

Garak hears stones skitter across the cliff and clatter down the rockface into the abyss, cracking like whips as they go. The gravel crunches beneath heavy boots in his mind, unnoticed by a companion too grounded in reality to listen to the dead. But then, it’s not really the dead man that follows Garak now – he was still alive, in fits of torturous poison when Garak fled, his shuddering body sobbed over by that woman. His sister, perhaps. The operation had gone wrong. Garak had got… carried away. 

He had panicked. He had forgotten professionalism.

When Julian says nothing, he finds himself compelled to speak again. “I do apologise for missing our meal. It was as I said, I fear – I was merely distracted.”

“Don’t worry,” Julian replies, offering him a small smile. “I promise not to uninvite you to our Halloween party.”

“I was under the impression there was something you wanted to tell me over lunch.”

“It can wait.”

That’s rather unlike him. Usually the doctor struggles to keep things to himself, at least once he’s decided to say them. He’s not one to put off declarations, even hard truths. He always admired that, about Julian. Even outwardly uncertain as he was in those early months and years, the character within was hard rock, unmalleable even to the most cunning or ill-intentioned manipulators. Garak could disagree with his beliefs, but he could not laugh at their strength. 

“This is like your Vic’s, isn’t it?” Julian says.

“I can’t say I see the similarity.”

Julian picks up a stone – a tiny smoothed out piece of clouded quartz – and turns it over in his hand. “Well, you’re not lying here.”

“My dear doctor, I _never_ lie.”

“I know, I know – it’s all true.”

“Especially the lies.”

Meeting his eye, Julian seems to bow beneath a flicker of sadness again. “Especially the lies.”

In the broken part of Garak’s brain, the footsteps are growing louder, coming closer. There is so much intention in their stride, and he resists the impulse to turn around and face his followers, knowing the shadows will only make that which he is most desperate not to see. 

He had only been there to extract information. The sister was supposed to be off-world. Hornets had buzzed about his head and drowned out sensible though, as there in the cramped stairwell he turned to the frenzy of a bee whose hive has been attacked. The girl, the young woman, she _screamed,_ screamed and screamed to bring neighbours and servants and strangers of the street running and Garak too ran – sprinted for the city outskirts, choked on hot sand in the wind. 

_“Traitor,”_ comes the hiss in his ear, sudden and piercing beneath the scales. _“Burn the traitor. Burn the witch.”_

“No!” Garak snaps, and beside him, Julian jumps sharply. “No, I-” He falls silent.

“You what, Garak?” Julian asks, his voice soft and low again, gaze beseeching. But there is no answer that Garak can give.

*

“Thoughts or compulsions to hurt yourself or others?”

“None.”

“Feelings of detachment or difficulty distinguishing between thoughts and reality?”

“I’m well aware of what is real and what isn’t, Lieutenant,” Garak says tightly, fingers twisting in his lap. 

“It’s Ezri to you,” she replies. “No one calls me Lieutenant. And that doesn’t really answer my question. Julian told me-”

“The doctor is often prone to sentimental flights of fancy, as you would know full well,” he bites back. The scene in the holosuite has changed to a wide-open desert plain, devoid of trees and lit by gentle early-evening sun. There are no shadows, no dark nooks or hidden corners. Just Garak kneeling upon the endless red earth, letting the whispers dissolve into the window. Ezri crouches beside him, hair lightly ruffled by the breeze.

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_

Yes. Cardassia. The sweeping parched plains he had visited in his youth, the desert whose cover he fled for after the operation in Krelmor Rain went wrong and that woman was left to sob over the slowly suffering body of her brother upon the stairs. He never returned to that province again, never saw Krelmor Rain’s high walls and stained-glass windows and shining statues. Even if he had wished to go, Tain would’ve never allowed it. Two weeks of Garak starving in the desert was hardly enough punishment for such a monumental failure. He was in his cell for a month. Working, of course. Intelligence, even interrogation, bred best in the stagnant dark. 

“Garak,” Ezri murmurs.

He drags himself back above the surface to flash the young counsellor his most winning smile. Then he remembers who else he used to give that smile to, for much more unfortunate reasons, and thinks better of it. “Yes, _Ezri?”_

“You were dissociating again,” she explains quietly.

“I find that hard to believe. Unlike many of your patients,” he says, “I would much rather be _here_ than taking some of refuge within my own head. It’s hardly a pretty place.”

“I can imagine. But you’d be wrong about my other patients.” She settles down on the tufts of desert grass. “It’s… well, it’s not a _voluntary_ process. People don’t retreat into their minds because they’re places they’d rather be than the real world, if you understand what I mean. It’s just that they don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“How philosophical.” 

She smiles. “I’m _pretty_ sure I studied psychology at the academy, not philosophy.” 

“I suppose it could be said the first psychologists were only ignorant philosophers.”

Ezri plucks a piece of the long grass from the ground and begins tying it into a bow. “Are you calling me ignorant?” she asks, teasing. She holds up a hand to silence him before he can reply. “I’m only joking. Are you all right if I ask a few more questions, though? I think it might be easier that way.”

It might be _easier_ if she didn’t feel the need to talk to him at all. But Julian will be hovering around outside the holosuite even now, anxiously pacing as if waiting to hear the outcome of a loved one’s surgery. Even if Garak could bring himself to bully Ezri into accepting his case as helpless, Julian would refuse to let it go.

“Be my guest.”

“Well, how have you been sleeping?”

“As well as I ever do.” Aside from a night curled up on the floor of his shop under the desk, of course. But even then, he slept through the whole night, so what does he really have to complain about? It wasn’t the first night he'd slept on the ground, and at least Deep Space 9 is warm. And carpeted.

“Do you want to talk about what you saw?”

Garak gives her a sharp look. _“No._ No, that won’t be necessary.”

A flicker of disappointment passes over Ezri’s expression, but she doesn’t seem surprised. “Is there anything you do want to do?”

For once he speaks without bothering to think the matter over first. “Sleep.” He would like to sleep – he would like to sleep for years, if possible, right through this terrible world to wake up in a brighter future. How pathetically human of him. 

“Do you mean that?” Ezri presses. 

“Does the doctor tell you nothing?” Garak snaps back, sick of the conversation and beginning to bow beneath the weight of all the whispering voices that build on the distant wailing wind. “I never say _anything_ I don’t mean. It’s a useful doctrine to live by – I thoroughly recommend it.” 

He notices the small things about her demeanour – the way her eyes widen ever so slightly at the sharpness of his tone, strand of desert grass slipping through her fingers, the way she breaks her breathing pattern to steel herself to face him. It triggers a sting of guilt he had long thought impossible for him to feel.

“If you’d like to sleep, maybe you can take the rest of today off work,” she suggests with more polite calm than he probably deserves. “You have your sleep medication if you have trouble.”

“Is this a professional recommendation?”

“I think what you need now,” Ezri replies, “is a familiar place and some peace and quiet. I always find that helps me when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Your mind needs a break to avoid blowing up like a- like a computer in a power surge. All the noise, all the people, all the memories… it mounts up before you even realise it’s there, and then-” She breaks off with a heavy sigh, looking glum. “I’ll let you go back to your quarters to rest,” she says steadily. “But Garak, if you’re suffering from serious delusions or distressing thoughts, you’ve just _got_ to tell me or Julian. Or if you’re in some kind of trouble-”

“No more trouble than any traitor to Cardassia can boast,” he mutters.

Ezri sits forward. “Garak, you're not in any danger, are you?"

He barks with humourless laughter. How sweet of her. If only he was – if only someone _was_ murmuring in the shadows behind him, creeping closer to take his life or punish him for his treacherous indiscretion. Then he wouldn’t have to face the unfortunate fact that fulfilling his duty in this war means losing some fracturing part of his mind. “You know,” he says, taken by a flight of candour, “I _did_ believe for a moment, that I was. It wouldn’t be the first time. My mind seems curiously _intent_ on creating these kinds of poor excuses to avoid my obligations. Like a small child searching for reasons not to do their assigned schoolwork.” 

“Maybe that’s something we can work on, when you have the energy.”

“Your faith in your ability to change me is an example to us all,” he remarks, not entirely in sarcasm.

“Oh,” Ezri says, “I don’t think _I_ can change _you._ But I can help you change yourself. That’s my job, after all.”

He stands slowly, swaying as the world seems to blur between his eyes. He hasn’t had anything to drink in over a day. “And you do it so remarkably well. Though not well enough, I fear, to induce me to divulge any further secrets.”

“Would you talk to Julian?”

“I speak with the doctor almost daily,” he replies, though from the look in her eyes he can tell she knows more. It would make sense. Jadzia probably guessed the moment she saw Garak and Julian together. And beyond the memories she gained from the Dax symbiont, Ezri has an unusual knack for emotions and more insight into Garak’s psyche than most would ever be allowed to achieve. _She knows._ Of course she knows. He does a poor job of hiding it. 

“I’m glad,” Ezri tells him. “We all need people on our side sometimes. He’s always been there for you.”

Sometimes he forgets just how _much_ Jadzia Dax was around to see on Deep Space 9. 

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you to bed.” And for once, Garak finds it within himself not to take issue with being treated by someone half his age as if he were a child. There’s little worth in arguing, in any case. She may be rather small, but she retains all of Jadzia Dax’s ferocity and all her own determination. She refuses to let him sink himself.

He takes a steady breath, willing his body to relax. Not that it’ll work, but he may as well do Ezri the favour of trying. “Computer, end program.” The desert and its comforting sunlight fade to leave only the grey. An astounding technology. For a few minutes there, Garak had truly forgotten how close the walls were to crushing him. It’s impossible, on a space station. And yet sometimes he feels like he’s on Tzenketh again, stone cracking and crumbling, the world becoming a roar as the building collapsed and left him there in the rubble, looking into the empty eyes of his former fellow operative’s mangled corpse. 

“Was that Cardassia?” Ezri asks.

“Close enough,” he answers. “Cardassia IV.”

“That’s where the Hutet labour camp was. I remember- I mean, Jadzia remembered.”

And maybe it is a shame, the way that Cardassia has wrecked itself. No one will remember Cardassia IV’s golden deserts and cities of glass when it’s gone, but the sting of that injustice, that cruelty, will linger. 

“You miss it, don’t you?”

“I miss faith, my dear,” he replies. “It’s quite a different matter.”

The doctor is waiting outside, just as Garak suspected he would be. He’s perched in an almost impressively unusual way on a chair, leaning on the railing and looking out over Quark’s bar and the quiet mid-afternoon crowd. Lunchtime stragglers, those who for some reason would choose a Ferengi bar above the replimat or litany of other small businesses for their afternoon coffee or tea. Julian leaps up the moment the holosuite door opens. Garak is struck by his face, more so than usual.

_Finish what you started._ He shakes his head to dispel the voice, but the ghost doesn’t seem to want to let him go. He can feel it hanging over his shoulder even now.

“Is everything all right?” Julian demands, glancing between Garak and Ezri.

“I think so,” Ezri says. “Garak’s going for a lie-down. Can I rely on you to make sure he makes it to his quarters okay?”

Garak sighs with exasperation. “Truly, this level of- of demeaning _coddling_ is most unnecessary.”

_“Coward, traitor!”_ the voice hisses in his ear, clear and loud enough to almost be real. This time, he resists the urge to jerk away from its verbal bite, opting to ignore the words instead. 

“I’m sure it is, but I’m going to come with you anyway,” Julian declares, taking his arm in a rare gesture that Garak tries to pretend means nothing to him at all. Of course, the selfish, foolish little part of him he attempted to quash years ago wants to be coddled by the doctor, wouldn’t find it _demeaning_ at all. How distasteful. Still, the impossible dreams taste sweeter than the shadows that tear at the edges of his vision, grabbing at his arms and legs with none of Julian’s tender gentleness, and he would much rather not walk Deep Space 9’s haunted hallways alone today. 

“And tell him to get something to eat and drink!” Ezri calls after them. The last thing he sees of her, glancing over his shoulder, is her smile. Earnest and optimistic. He wishes he could tell her about the Romulan ambassador, his skin charred and bits of him seared off altogether, hovering behind her shoulder. The stench of burned flesh seems to permeate even out of the Promenade, and Garak is glad for the familiar smell of Julian and the jumja stick stand to keep the memories at bay. There are few scents more terrible than people burning. Their clothes, their skin, their hair. It’s the true taste of death.

“So…” Julian says slowly as they step into the turbolift. “How did it go? With Ezri.”

“You needn’t concern yourself, Doctor,” he replies. “I’m quite all right.”

“I can’t just _not_ be concerned, Garak. If you weren’t up for lunch today, you should’ve told me. I wouldn’t have been offended.”

No, but he would have been disappointed, and _lonely,_ and in his right mind that is something Garak could never bring himself to allow. “Believe me,” he says, “when I say your company may be one of the few things likely to aid me in this state.”

“Does that mean you’ll still be at the Halloween party tomorrow?” Julian asks hopefully. 

“Of course.”

Julian knows the way to his quarters, quite instinctively, it seems, because he never once seems to look away from Garak all the way, never once pauses to get his bearings. It’s easier walking these halls than it was the last time, with Julian by his side and the lights being a little brighter in the daytime. The creeping discomfort presses on, but he’s reassured by the knowledge that if Julian, with his enhanced senses and bat’leth-sharp reflexes, doesn’t hear something, it isn’t truly here. If Julian keeps walking, the shadows are not people. If Julian keeps watching him, the voices are only memories. 

“I’m sorry for keeping you from your work,” Garak says out of necessity, searching for an acquittal.

“It’s no issue.” Julian smiles. “I work late anyway.”

How lovely he is. How little he deserves the corruption of Garak’s character, his mind. No, there is no one out to get him, not this time. The horror of the past few days is something else entirely. 

They pass by a Bajoran woman with her young child in the corridor. The little one wears a long, shiny black cape with a high collar and fake teeth – fangs, more like. 

“Brilliant costume,” Julian compliments as they go by, exchanging a kind look with the mother.

“He got it yesterday and refuses to take it off,” she explains. “Thank you for organising all of this, Doctor.”

Julian shrugs. “It’s the least we could do.”

“Who was that?” Garak asks when they’ve rounded the corner into his corridor, curious. 

“Nenji Mika,” Julian answers. “She writes for Bajoran press on the station.”

“Ah – no doubt she was desperate to interview the great Doctor Julian Bashir the minute she arrived.” He’s trying to find excuses not to be left alone in his room. The closer he gets the more he realises it was a terrible idea from the start, though dear Ezri couldn’t have known any better.

“Haha, very funny.” Julian pauses at Garak’s door, leaning against the frame in a casual, almost domestic way. “See you tomorrow?”

Garak does not want to say goodbye. He doesn’t want to walk through that door, knowing what lurks within. _You should have told Ezri. You should tell the doctor now._ But he couldn’t, and he can’t. Not out of pride – his repression is an uncharacteristically selfless act, an unusual feat of generosity. 

Julian is frowning. “Do you… want me to stay?”

“No,” Garak says sharply, stomach dropping, head swimming. “No. Until tomorrow, my dear doctor.”

Not entirely reassured but at least smiling again, Julian steps back. “Until tomorrow. Rest up well, call if you need anything. _Even_ if it’s three in the morning.”

“How generous of you.”

“I’m in the holiday spirit.” He winks before he goes. Garak stands there in the doorway and watches the doctor leave, slipping away around the corner at his typical restless pace. 

He unlocks his front door. The room inside is dark and smells of burning. 

“Ah, Elim, do come in,” comes the voice from within, deep and venomously warm. Garak meets Tain’s glazed-over, long-dead eyes in the light of a table lamp. The floor of his quarters is crawling with maggots. Something dark and vaguely humanoid lies slumped in the far corner. 

Tain’s face twists into an unnatural, post-mortem smile. “We’ve been waiting for you.”


	4. hello earth

One of Garak’s earliest memories is the dark. Cardassians have a kind of predilection for it – though they live gratefully beneath the warmth of the desert sun, their sensitivity to light and colour is more extreme than usually found in humanoids. Darkness should be comforting. Most Cardassian architects must have found it to be so, from the way they designed their buildings and stations and ships to be so full of shadow.

Garak's earliest memories are of the dark. There’s no peace in hisrecollections, though. Only panic. Only a weight around his ankles, his neck, dragging him down into a bottomless ocean. He always hated bright lights, but hatred is nothing compared to fear. All manner of things lurk in darkness. Even if the light burns his eyes, it doesn’t lie.

The darkness is lying to him now. This unfortunate scene is proof enough of that.

He’s not sure whether he’s been asleep at all in the past few hours – he’s not even sure what time it really is. There’s a fog in his quarters, filling his eyes and ears with the voices. Some of them are audible, even recognisable. Most are just wordless groans or cries. The one constant is Tain. It makes poetic sense, perhaps. After all, Tain made Garak into what he is. Without the generous guidance of his father, what would he be? Nobody. Nothing. As inconsequential as a small scrape in the paint on a wall, easily covered over and forgotten.

“You can’t keep ignoring me, Elim,” Tain says from the corner, almost cheerfully. “Is this any way to treat a guest?”

“A guest?” Garak spits. “Is that what they call parasites these days, hm?”

Tain’s laugh echoes through his skull. “I’m only a part of you,” he points out. “If you _truly_ wanted me to leave, you would make me. I am just a figment of your remarkable imagination, after all.”

Garak buries his head further in his hands and wishes he could leave the room. He would, if not for the corpse of the Romulan commander who’s taken it upon himself to block the door. Every time Garak looks towards his escape, he sees pools of green blood and feels it slick on his fingers, splattered across his face. The not-quite-Kelas is curled up beneath a chair, whimpering like a scared animal. Garak cannot see him, only knows he is there, knows by the voice saying _his eyes, his eyes, his eyes._

“This is ridiculous,” he says, looking towards the ceiling and attempting to breathe.

“It is, rather,” Tain agrees.

He cannot quite recall ever feeling so… disconnected. Detachment is a necessary sickness of intelligence agents, of course, but at least like that he has always been cold, hard. Like ice – stinging to touch, physical, plain and simple. _Ice cracks easily._ This is beyond a few cracks, though. This is shards breaking off with every bruising, the whole body shattering and collapsing in on itself, the decorative ice sculpture of a vain legat falling from the table and smashing into pieces upon the sandstone floor. Water is so much more infinite.

“I was water,” Garak mouths.

Tain’s ghost dances in the shadows, the silhouettes on the wall before Garak’s eyes. “You were brilliant.”

“I was, wasn’t I?”

_“Spy,”_ gargles the Romulan in the doorway, choking and gagging more on his green blood as the word slips out. 

“Oh, do be quiet,” Tain sighs. 

The not-Kelas begins to moan louder, breaking out into desperate sobs. “His _eyes-_ I- I… look at his _eyes.”_

“You do have rather noisy ghosts, don’t you?” remarks Tain.

Garak snorts bitterly and leaves his cocoon beside the armchair to crawl across the floor, cheek scraping on the carpet, to the side of the room where the light is a little better. The terror is beginning to creep back in again, unwanted, and it tightens like a rope around his neck. He almost wishes he could see Tain properly – wishes he could look into those aloof eyes as he must have done thousands of times while his father was still alive, because then at least he might not be afraid. But this _thing,_ with all its fluidity and faint impression of rotting flesh, is unbearable. Every other moment it feels like it’s leaning over his shoulder, breathing down Garak’s neck in a wash of decay.

A small sound breaks out of him, weak and tremulous.

“Something the matter, Elim?” Tain asks, though this time his voice is more garbled, more distant. Garak could tell himself a thousand times that none of it was real – that Tain was dead, that he _saw_ him die, there in the internment camp lonely and powerful and pathetic – and it would change nothing. The impression is more than enough. He hears a thud in the corner of the room. 

“Makor Mara,” he murmurs.

“Hm?”

“That was his name,” Garak says slowly, digging his fingers into the folds of his tunic. “Or was it- No, no, that was it. I’m sure-” He breaks off with a strangled cough. The back of his throat tastes of dust and carpet fibres. He grabs, _flails,_ for purchase within his own mind, trying to remember that hard, untouchable thing he used to be. He remembers the sharp detachment of his speech, the swiftness with which he moved in the shadows. He remembers simply sitting there, looking into Kelas’ eyes, and smiling. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, exactly?” he snaps at Tain, realising he hadn’t even thought to ask before. In the ghost stories Garak has heard from more spiritual peoples throughout the years, ghosts need some kind of fulfilment to leave the living alone. _Am I even living?_ Perhaps not. Perhaps he is dead. He has no way of knowing, after all. He has no way of truly knowing anything anymore, now his world has blended memory with the present. Perhaps he is dead, and this is all just some human idea of hell, a place for the less deserving to languor in for eternity.

“Why, this is justice, isn’t it?” Tain replies. “Or your charming version of it, at least, Elim.”

Garak stares at the ground, picking out individual threads in the carpet, fighting against his own body to breathe. “You’re here to _punish_ me?” he sneers, clutching at the old mask again as though his life depended on it. 

“You’re the one doing all the _punishing._ We’re only-”

“In my mind, yes, I know,” he interrupts bitterly. “Oh, you’re only figments of dear old Elim Garak’s imagination, aren’t you? So what is it, then, hm? Am I wracked with guilt over the horrors of my past, am I down on my knees beginning the universe for forgiveness?” He shakes as he speaks. The thuds coming from the corner – more like sickening squelches now, like a body falling from a great height to turn to bloody mush upon the ground, or like a head being repeatedly slammed into a wall until the skull shatters and pieces of flesh and bone go flying and blood splatters on the doorframe and stains clothes – are growing louder and more desperate, cutting across the sound of the long-dead Romulan’s spitting and Kelas’ moans. 

“No, no,” he continues, sucking in air. “No – I’m not sorry!” He almost laughs. “That’s it, isn’t it? I’m not sorry at all. I was, maybe, I didn’t always _intend_ to become a traitor, but that’s what you called me, that’s what you _made_ me, and that’s what I became. Poor Elim Garak, exiled from Cardassia! I should’ve withered away miserable on this station, but I didn’t. I actually had the audacity to be _content.”_ His lip curls at just the thought, a torrid mixture of loathing for the memory of the man behind him and pervasive self-disgust. 

Tain huffs with dry amusement. “You’ve always been a sharp one.”

“This is _far_ from justice,” Garak says. “This is _retribution.”_

“Retribution, vengeance… _revenge,”_ Tain sighs. “Call it what you will – it’s all the same line of trade.”

“Your line of trade,” Garak bites. “That’s what it was always about, wasn’t it? You weren’t the court exacting justice. You were hardly thinking of Cardassia’s _future,_ either, not even in the Gamma Quadrant. I was- I was _blind_ to you.”

Tain’s presence leans across his back, the next words breathed into his ear on bitter air. “My line of trade, and yours.”

Garak is caught between the desire to cry out from fear and the compulsion to sink into the silence that washes over in moments of true, unadulterated terror, the kind that usually persists for just a moment when a shadow acts strangely walking down a hall late at a night, or when something goes thud in a closet not opened for several months, or when a child realises for the first time their carers could bury them in the ground without too much remorse and perhaps even pull the trigger with their own hands. 

Somebody knocks on the door.

Or, at least, he hears a knock on the door. It seems to ring out more clearly, more calmly, than any other sound. _Real._ If not, he may be in greater trouble than he thought. He hasn’t paid much mind to the future throughout the past few hours, the present too overwhelming to consider much else. But maybe he should have. He had somewhere to be tonight, unless that was tomorrow, or… no, that _was_ tonight, he’s almost certain, and Julian-

“Garak, are you in there?” The warmth of the doctor’s voice is somewhat muffled by the wall between them, but its brightness still strikes him in the terrible, ghostly dark of his room. His mind could not replicate Julian’s etherealness with such accuracy. Even this version of Tain is not quite right – more accurate than the not-Kelas, but still somehow twisted by fading memories. Hearing Julian is enough to get him on his feet. He sways on the spot.

A distant chirp, and then outside the door Julian is saying, “no, I’m just picking up Garak from his quarters, but I don’t think he’s here. I’m going to go see if I can find him, don’t start until we’re back, I-”

The doctor jumps a little when Garak opens the door to him, the Romulan corpse that once haunted that corner of the room having slunk away into the shadows upon Garak’s approach. Then he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Garak couldn’t possibly form sentences now, so he simply stands in silence and tries to sort through all the noise within his head to pick out _why_ Julian has come to him now. 

Julian. Pristine. Intact, at least physically. The light in his eyes has been worn at over the years, thought tonight it seems to glitter as sharp as ever. There is nothing dead or rotted about his body. He carries with him an air of boyish charm and the scent of fresh citrus and human spices Garak cannot name. It’s his outfit that draws Garak’s attention most particularly. The long-sleeved light blue shirt, the heels of his shoes – the uniform of a bygone era, before Starfleet became heavy and grey and torn apart by war. The natural curls of his hair have been let alone for once. It suits him.

“Trick or treat,” Julian greets, as if Garak is supposed to understand what that means.

“Is that a question of some kind?” he asks, flinching as something brushes by his hand. 

“Oh, I’ll explain later,” the doctor sighs. “Come on, we’re already late for the party.”

_“Leaving so soon?”_ comes a hissed whisper from the room behind him, the voice real despite its disembodiment.

“Is something wrong?” Julian asks him.

Garak coughs. He can’t say for certain what he looks like. His hair is quite likely askew, and something about the collar of his tunic feels off. He has spent the best part of the past day on the floor. “I’m quite all right, Doctor,” he replies, as sleekly as possible. He only has to be his old self. He always used to win their arguments back then. “Now, this party of yours.”

“Let's go,” Julian says, the corner of his mouth twitching. Always so _knowing,_ the doctor. For a long time, Garak thought he hated that about him. “We don't want to be late.” 

He doesn’t allow himself to look back into the room as he locks the door. The ghosts can stay there, for all he cares. They can rot there. The corridors are filled with real people, clearly present before his eyes, and that is some small comfort.

“Do you like the costume?”

Garak looks over the doctor’s clothes thoughtfully. “It’s not criminal, for a replicator.”

“Oh, really Garak,” Julian says, rolling his eyes. “Don’t get all superior over a Halloween costume. I only didn’t come to you because I knew how busy you were.”

“You can always be assured of my assistance in the realm of fashion, my dear doctor, war or no.”

“Don’t worry, I know. Just like I’ll always be there to fix up all the minor cuts, scrapes, scratches, burns and bruises you manage to accrue. _Even_ if it’s your fault for being foolish enough to start fights with Klingon warriors or Romulan officers in the first place.” He glances over to smile at Garak as they turn into the main hallway of this level, cutting the quickest path to Julian’s quarters. Garak has rarely been there, over the years. It is too tormenting.

“Julian!”

“Hold up, I think that’s Nerys,” Julian mutters, looking around. 

The colonel appears from out behind a pair of Bajoran engineers, and Garak sees he is not the only one to forgo a traditional Halloween costume. Kira wears her casual Bajoran clothes – soft greens and rich blood reds – and waves them down, seeming to be in an unusually carefree mood for once. She’s dragging someone along with her. A body. A figure, blurred about the edges Garak moves so sharply he knocks into Julian’s shoulder, the breath snatched from his lungs. 

_It must fill you with pride._ But who could be proud of a creation as monstrous as this? Who could see a horror like this and think, even for a moment, that their mark upon their universe was anything more than a putrid, bloody smear, an unfortunate stain stinking of decay and shame? 

“On your way to the party?” Julian is asking distantly, beyond the high-pitched whistle of the Romulan torture device and the sound of dying. “Great costume, Constable.”

“Hmph.” The pair of eyes turn on Garak. Then four more eyes, all staring, all looking right into the heart where Garak is only a pathetic creature reduced to desperate sobs for forgiveness – no strength, no pride, no loyalty. He thinks the next words spoken might have been something close to, “Garak, are you all right?” But all he can hear is _isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of? Isn’t this everything you’ve ever wanted? Since the very first day they sent you away,_ this _is what you’ve been dreaming of._

It’s hard to even tell, exactly, where Odo’s eyes even are. His face is mangled. His whole body, really. Garak can remember the panic in Odo’s face the moment he realised he had been trapped, made physical and weak, and he can remember the cold humour with which he taunted him in the beginning, how confident he had felt in those few fleeting minutes that this, _this_ was where he belonged – Elim Garak the interrogator, the torturer. And he can remember this. The flesh, if it could even be called that, flaking from Odo’s form as he shook in the corner, the way he looked almost burned and _melted,_ how he gargled and gasped on every word he spoke.

Garak backs away a step. “I- I am just doing my _job.”_

“Your job?” someone says, but Garak can hardly hear it. He just needs the truth, he just wants it to _end._ Odo screams, the sound choked and broken by torture, his mouth open wide and pieces of skin and flesh peeling away like a lizard shedding skin, only so much more brutal. The body is blackened as if scorched and collapsing in on itself, crying out for _home._ The monster that might once have been Odo speaks, and the reflection of himself is so clear in the silver glass it stings to look at. 

He only wanted to go home.

He only wanted to be with his people. 

Cardassia burns down around him, corrupted long ago but now exposed to the all-seeing light of war. The people cry out in terror, in pain as they are cut into scaled, bloody pieces, spread out across the land by those who would claim to lead them. Bodies to fertilise the crops of conflict, corpses come from greed and some terrible, broken part of the Cardassian spirit beneath the soil that demands domination, demands the just punishment for those unfortunate enough to be born unlucky and small. There was always a poison lurking within, a kind of existential fault that people overlooked for generations until it grew to sharp and bloody to avoid. 

He wants to turn and run. So he does.

After he left the house of Makor Maraall those years ago,he had nothing to do but run. He took to the desert plains beyond the city, feeling the threat of phasers trained on his back as he went. His failure hung heavy over his head. King Henry’s crown had begun to slip that day – he felt it, Tain saw it. The first step in his fall from grace. There was blood in his mouth as he ran and ran and ran away into the hot sand, towards the twilight beginning to descend on the faraway, flat horizon. The authorities would be after him soon enough, and when they came even his position within the Obsidian Order would mean nothing. Tain’s clan was rogue, barely acknowledged or approved of, and it cast off its members the moment they were compromised. Even Garak, prized favourite, feared protégé of Enabran Tain, could not be safe from that necessary judgement. 

Vaguely, he hears someone calling after him, but the desert winds are too loud to make out individual words or voices. He needs a way out – these corridors are too tight, too trapping, and even if he threw himself out an airlock and into the cold suffocation of space it would still all be too close. To Tain, to the tortured form of Odo, the dead Romulan oozing blood and liquid rot into the carpet, the unbearable stench of the not-Kelas’ fear.

Dying would be easier, in theory. But then, Cardassia needs him. He can still save his home, if he tries, he can make something new and strong from repurposed foundations. Or at least the rest of the Alpha Quadrant will not have to suffer for Cardassia’s corruption. Maybe. Maybe if he wakes up tomorrow to Julian and dear Ezri taking down their Halloween decorations, throwing out the ghosts of the night before, maybe then.

He slumps against a wall somewhere, dizzy and clutching his head. There’s no one else here – the rooms in this hall are always empty, unused, places for secretive meetings and criminal encounters – and he squeezes his eyes shut to hide from the dancing silhouettes in the doorways. 

“Come now, Elim,” he whispers. The wall is cool and solid beneath his hands. That should be enough. “No more of this- this pointless self-inflicted suffering. You’ve already made a pathetic performance of yourself tonight, just… just…” He forces his eyes open. Figures moving without faces. Voices growing louder, accusatory. He killed that Romulan all those years ago, and he wasn’t sorry. No, he simply stood up, dripping with blood the colour of the grass in his little garden and walked away. And after the Klingon assault upon the station not so far in the past, before the war forced their sides together, with Julian so heavy-hearted and frowning all the time, his quiet comment after lunch one day that, _I’m a doctor, even to save Odo, even to protect my patients, it felt wrong._ So much guilt for a few necessary, justified deaths. _I just pulled the trigger. I couldn’t even think about it._ That was the day Garak realised the doctor was not quite the man he had convinced himself he was. 

He sat in the room with Odo during the Romulan-Cardassian attack upon the Founders, activated the device, and did not think about it. He gutted the Romulan officer, dug that garden tool deep into his neck, and did not think about it. Now his mind will fix itself on nothing else. 

_Revenge,_ the ghost of Tain had said. He was not entirely wrong about that. The entire corridor is swaying and swimming and turning to black and grey liquid, a rising ocean that threatens to drag him down and drown him. 

Arms come around him, warm and familiar. He felt them once before.

“Garak, Garak, it’s okay, I’m… _Garak,_ can you hear me?” The breath is comfortingly warm against his cheek. A gentle, careful hand slides up his throat to cup the side of his face, more certain even than the wall against his shoulder or the floor beneath his feet. 

He nods uselessly, because there is nothing else to do. 

“Okay, okay,” Julian breathes. Because it _is_ Julian. It’s always Julian. He holds onto Garak as if afraid he might fall and break on the ground like a fine piece of porcelain. Garak forces himself to focus on the doctor’s face, masked with concern and difficult to read in the pale light. So beautiful, Julian. Touched but not marred by the years, retaining all its original brightness. 

“Is it another attack?” Julian asks him calmly. “Claustrophobia?”

Garak opens his mouth, but no words seem to come out. The back of his throat is dry and the taste of blood in his mouth persists, metallic and bitter. He looks around furtively to see if Odo, or the monstrous version of his born from Garak’s callous brutality, has followed. The hallway is empty. Just him, Julian, and the shadows.

“Garak, you’ve got to speak to me,” Julian presses.

“Someone… I… Doctor…” _Someone is here._ But only for him, he has to think. The looming presence exists only in his perception of the world. The doctor will think he’s lost his mind, they all will. Sisko will take away his honorary Starfleet badge, citing the compassion of a responsible captain. He will lose what little ability to help his people that he has left. “I… dreamed that you died.” He says it in confusion, only just remembering. He passed out for a few hours last night, curled up on the hard floor, and in his fever dreams he saw Julian back out there on the Promenade, appealing desperately to Garak’s goodness, to the mercy he believed with so much determination _must_ exist, only for his optimism to be repaid with death. People are just bodies, in the end.

“Oh,” Julian says quietly. “Well, I’m- well I’m not dead, am I?” He offers a weak smile. “I’m right here, completely fine. See?” His grip on Garak grows a little tighter. 

“Yes, I see that, m-my dear-” He stops speaking at the sound of footsteps, but when he raises his head there is still no one there.

“All right, I’m taking you up to the Promenade. Are you okay with that? Just so you can have some more room to breathe.”

He nods again. “I- I do apologise,” he says sort of thickly, still shaking and struggling to see straight. He only knows he is moving because of Julian, the shining cruiser tugging his little space shuttle along through the storm. “Your Halloween party-”

Julian gives him a very firm look. “The party can wait, Garak, don’t apologise. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have told me you were having trouble. I mean, last night I could see that _something_ more was upsetting you, but I didn’t want to push and pry if you preferred not to talk about it. I’m not angry,” he adds quickly. “It’s all okay, all right? It’s just you and me, and I’ve got you.”

But if it’s just him and Julian, why does he feel like they’re being watched? 

Garak has always trusted very little in life. At least he used to be able to trust himself.

“I’m afraid I’m not quite… _all there,_ at the moment,” he manages. “If that doesn’t sound too fanciful.”

If Julian is worried, or afraid, he doesn’t show it. He simply comes to a halt outside the turbolift at the end of the hall and presses the button to call it. He still has his arm around Garak, more tactile than he ever usually is. Were Garak not feeling half-mad, he might have revelled in it. 

“What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“Reality,” he answers, “is rather… blurred. It has been for some time.”

The turbolift door opens. Julian frowns at him. “How long is _some time?_ Garak, if I find out you’ve been in this state for weeks or even months and haven’t told me-”

“Only a few days,” he interrupts. “But the uh, effects of the condition have been rather severe.”

“Yes, it seems that way. You weren’t going to hurt yourself, were you?” 

Garak knows the incident with the airlock some while ago must be on the doctor’s mind. A fair place for his mind to wander. He hears a door slide open and closed somewhere behind them in the hall. He does not turn around. “No, Doctor,” he replies, attempting a wry smile. “No, I merely needed… space.” 

The doctor does not ask from _what._ He gives Garak’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, nudging him towards the turbolift. A shadowy mouth waiting to devour him, not that the corridor is any better. Everywhere on this station is haunted, worse even than Empok Nor, and the corners are narrow and filled with watching eyes and memories.

“Did you hear that?” Julian says suddenly, frowning as the turbolift door shuts. There is not much air in the turbolift. Of course, realistically, there is endless air – a station wouldn’t be very useful without the life support systems to ensure nobody suffocates during a simple journey from one level to another. Logic has little to do with it. 

“No,” he replies, “but then, my dear doctor, your _genetically-enhanced_ hearing is far more proficient than my own.”

“Hm. Well, Promenade, then,” Julian requests, and the turbolift begins to move. “Have you eaten today, by the way? Had something to drink?” He seems to take Garak’s silence for an answer and sighs. “We’ve been over this, Garak. You can’t forsake basic self-care for work. Believe me, I did it for years, and it _didn’t_ turn out well.”

“Yes, I do remember that.”

_“You_ remember a few years ago. _I_ remember medical school. I barely ate or slept for _weeks_ on end sometimes. It almost killed me more than once.”

The turbolift shudders. Then it stops. The door does not open. Garak’s stomach drops. 

“That’s odd,” Julian mutters, squinting at the level display. “Maybe it’s a power issue. I’ll call-”

There’s a painful creak and the turbolift suddenly drops down. The fall lasts only a split second, but it’s enough to knock Garak off his feet and the air out of his lungs. The walls are closing in. The main overhead lights have gone out, leaving only the weak amber glow of the display. Garak sees the hard line of Julian’s mouth as he messes with the controls. 

“Bashir to O’Brien. Miles, can you hear me? He’s probably at the party. Bashir to Engineering.” A long pause, painful and roaring in Garak’s ears. “Bashir to Security. Is anyone there? Bashir to Dax. Bashir to Kira. Bashir so Sis-”

“Doctor,” he interrupts, voice hoarse, “I don’t think they can hear you.”

_“Someone_ must be able to,” Julian replies. He jabs again at the display, pressing the emergency key as if his life depended upon in. “System override authorisation Bashir-JS-2-Alpha,” he mutters, to no response. “Damn. Damn, damn, _damnit.”_

“I- I _highly_ doubt cursing at the computer is likely to… to inspire it to function properly,” Garak comments with as much confident sarcasm as he can muster, which is very little. 

“Yes, but-” Julian looks at him and breaks off. “Garak, are you sure you’re all right? You don’t… well, you don’t look well. At all.” He drops to his knees to meet Garak’s eye level where he sits slumped in the corner of the turbolift, gaze searching. His palm reconnects with Garak’s cheek, feeling the scaled skin. “You haven’t taken something, have you?”

Again, not a question Garak can give a very certain answer to. He doesn’t remember. But that will worry the doctor, and Julian’s serenity already seems frayed at best. Though turbolift incidents are fairly – and one might say concerningly – common, the communications blackout is another matter. There must be some wider power system failure on the station. Not a reassuring thought to have when one has a claustrophobic trapped in the turbolift with them. “I don’t believe so,” he answers. 

“Okay, okay, good. It’s going to be fine, don’t you?” Julian adds. “You’re not alone, I’m right here.”

“My dear doctor, there is no need to treat me like… like a _child.”_

“Garak, I’m treating you like a _friend.”_ The turbolift shudders again, and Garak flinches. Julian takes his wrist and clenches tightly. “We’ll only be stuck in here for a few more minutes,” he promises. “Until someone works out where we are. It won’t be hard – Kira and Odo saw the way we went, and the internal sensors should still be able to pick up our biosignatures regardless.”

But despite that, it seems Garak has forgotten how to breathe. 

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_

_You were brilliant._

_I question your innocence._

_Blood for blood, Elim Garak._

_“Doctor,”_ Garak gasps as he claws at Julian’s sleeve like a beast. Their noses are so close they’re almost touching, but it’s not enough, it could never be enough. Julian is a part of him, in some strange, unfortunate way. Any distant feels like parsecs of empty space, cold and imposing. “I’m afraid I can’t quite tell… what exactly is, what of this is _real.”_

“All right, all right,” Julian says, forcing calm. “Well, I’m real, this turbolift is real. See?” He shuffles closer, extending one arm around Garak’s shoulder. “Very real. I just need you to slow your breathing. Remember the breath counting exercises Ezri talks about? I think that could help you right now, I think…”

Garak hears a hiss. He glances upwards. He cannot see, or hear, or think. He cannot breathe air and he can hardly feel Julian and the turbolift is small, so small and dark and filling up with ghosts, he feels like he might die in there. Something stings his eyes, something in the air. Unless it’s tears. But then, Elim Garak never cries. He hasn’t, not properly, since he was a child. 

_Bashir to Security, this is an emergency. We’re having some sort of malfunction in turbolift… Bashir to all channels, can anybody hear me? …Sabotaged… losing… no Garak, Garak please, can you…_

Elim Garak never cries, even when the sand on the desert wind burns his eyes. Even in the dream where Julian Bashir is before him, beautiful but entirely dead and rotten. He only stands there and watches.

*

_You must wake up._

Garak opens his eyes. The first thing he sees are the stars, a sea of white-specked black beyond the glass. He looks down. He looks between Julian and the needle in his hand, the syringe that slips through his fingers to roll away under a chair. Before him on the ground, Julian breathes in, and the sound is strangled and reminds Garak of dying.


	5. the morning fog

Garak has been known to lose track of time. He’s easily caught up his work – be it sewing or sabotage – and sometimes the hours can slip by like desert snakes into sand, until the moment he wakes up to find himself soaked in night without warning. Sometimes he walks into a room and forgets why or how he even came to be there. He’s used to being confused, _not in his right mind,_ stripped of his ability to clearly judge or control. The fact he almost threw himself out of an airlock into space, and honestly would have if he could, would make denying such a reality embarrassing. 

He grabs weakly at the front of the doctor’s pale blue shirt now, more lavender grey in this haunting light, and forces himself to keep his eyes open. Nausea roils in the pit of his stomach. Garak’s thoughts, heavy and blaring in kaleidoscopes of bright colour, are so loud in the front of his brain it’s almost impossible to breathe. He tries to count to ten. _Be aware of your surroundings,_ Ezri’s determined voice echoes in his head, but it’s undercut by the wretched sound of Julian’s breathing.

Julian. A body before him, fitting and gasping for air. Still alive. It’s a thin thread to hold onto in the swallowing darkness, and Garak tries to remember his training, the scenarios explored in secret sessions all those years ago. Kidnapping, medical emergency, capture and torture. Simple schoolroom lessons from the tutelage of Enabran Tain. 

He cannot think. The overwhelming desire is to be sick or sob – his brain has short-circuited, ears ringing with silence.

“G- _Garak,”_ comes a choked-out whisper from the ground before him. Garak turns his gaze down again. Julian. The real Julian, unless his mind is fooling him again. Quite clearly alive, and yet quite clearly dying. His eyes are wide, the whites glistening, his mouth gaping as his body jerks as if to cast out a spirit possessing him. 

“Doctor,” Garak murmurs uncertainly. “My dear- my… I…” The needle. It lies just a metre or two away, metal glistening in the shadows. It was in his hand. As Julian throws his head back to try to breathe again, sounding strangled, Garak can make out the entry point upon his neck. A small thing, just a pinprick. 

He wonders how he got here, this room with its wide windows of stars. It reminds him distantly of a version of Deep Space 9, only one from dreams. The same in almost every respect, but somehow darker and lonelier, somehow colder. The room is small and bare-boned. An unfinished artwork. Julian gasps again – just that body before him, suffering. Garak flinches away as Julian stretches out an arm towards him. This cannot be real. The last place he was- the last place he was had been the turbolift, and Julian had told him that was _real,_ but this, this is hallucination, because they last place they had been was the turbolift, and here is not there.

“Help… me…” Julian begs, reaching for him again. “Garak…”

What would the doctor do? He… he would check the syringe, or somehow guess the cause of his patient’s fitting, he would cure it in some brave, shining example of Federation heroism, he would have his name printed in books listing awards for courage in the face of unimaginable horrors, he would brush it off the next day but smile when he turned his back. 

Garak blinks. He has been here before. 

“Rathu hornets,” he half-whispers. He can hear them buzzing about inside of his skull. He’d got the dosage wrong, left that man to die all those years ago, and he remembers the agonised choking, the pleading, the horror in his victim’s eyes – reflecting his own – as he realised his mistake.

Julian groans. Garak can’t decide whether he’s been awake for three minutes or three hours. Mind blank, he leans across the doctor to reach for the needle. It is heavy and warm in his hand, just like the ones brought in silver cases, just like the ones Tain would show him in the catacombs beneath Cardassia Prime. 

_An excellent choice for information extraction,_ Tain breathes down his neck. _Though its value as a punishment should not be underestimated. Curious, isn’t it? How science, technology, may supply, but at the end of the day, nature provides._

“Not… not you.” 

Garak looks up from the needle in his hand, meeting Julian’s eyes. He should have tried to call for help. He should have tried the door. The doctor’s body twists and bends where it searches for breath – the venom of white Rathu hornets is an asphyxiant, after all. Only in high doses. Only in its final stages. 

“Doctor, I- I never meant…” Everything is collapsing. 

“Not _you,”_ Julian repeats, struggling to raise his head, his chest, from the floor. _“Behind_ you.”

Disorientation breaks beneath the force of blinding pain as Garak goes sprawling over the doctor’s slim form, feeling the burn, the heavy ache, in the back of his head. He didn’t even hear it coming before it hit him. In the confusion, he hears whispers – _be aware of your surroundings, be brilliant, be guilty._ He tastes blood in his mouth again, but this time it’s real, the metallic tang so sharp, so unmistakable. Julian is warm and fighting for life beneath him. Garak dreamed of closeness, but this is a nightmare. Someone towers over them both, more certain than any ghost with a faded face and distorted form.

“Well,” a rough voice says, cold and derisive. A point of clarity in the pain. Garak’s head does _hurt._ “Well, then.” And he recognises it – from somewhere in his memories, something shoved down into the darkness to be forgotten. “It took you long enough to wake up. I seem to have overestimated you, _Elim Garak.”_ A hand grabs the back of his scuffed tunic, dragging him up onto his knees by the neck. Garak turns his chin up, fingers still trailing across Julian body, the strength fading from it with each moment that passes. 

“He was supposed to be dead by now,” the voice mutters. “A pity. But then again, it might be better this way.” He sounds old. At least, older than Garak, though it isn’t the age or the inflection that Garak recalls, but the fear beneath. A tiny vein of uncertainty. Before, it had given him power. He had been superior, crueller, _better._ And yet he had run away that day. He had failed.

“Am I supposed to know who you are?” Garak asks hoarsely, bloody spit painting his lips. He bit the inside of his mouth on the way down.

The man growls, moving to meet the light. His face is Cardassian, and much like any other face. Scaled and grey. Forgettable. Insignificant. It’s the face of a dead man. The last time Garak saw it, it was stretched wide, suffocating and desperate. Filled with a horrific terror that followed Garak out into the desert, all the way to a distant oasis where he finally fell down in exhaustion.

“I should… _congratulate_ you on this little show,” Garak manages. His smile is bitter. 

“I’d hope it’s good,” his captor replies. “It’s the last thing you’ll ever see.”

Garak laughs hollowly. 

“I’d almost given up on finding you, Garak. I had, in fact, until a _kind_ stranger was good enough to help me discover who-” He breaks off for a brief bought of coughing, covering his mouth with the hand not currently holding Garak by his collar. _“-Who_ was responsible.”

“Whatever it was that _I_ did to you, I apologise profusely, but I’m afraid my memory is- is not what it used to be.”

The arm tugs on his tunic, fabric pressing uncomfortably against his airway. “Ha! Don’t pretend you don’t _remember_ me. Oh, I’m not the man I once was, to be sure. But I saw it in your eyes. You _know_ who I am.”

“And if I did?” Garak tries. “What then?”

“Impatient to die?” Makor Maraasks him. Well, it’s one way to answer a question. “The truth is, you’re a slippery little fish, Garak. He told me as much, he warned me if I wasn’t careful you would _slippery fish_ right out of my hands. And as much as I _hate_ to play underhand, I wasn’t about to give you the chance to swim away before I’d got my hook in you. Hence the less than orthodox manner of our encounter – I wish I could say I was sorry.”

Julian makes a particularly nasty choking sound.

“A pity he had to be with you,” Maraadds, staring. “Who was he, by the way?”

“He _is_ Doctor Julian Bashir, Chief Medical Officer aboard this station.”

The irony must be funny to Mara. He laughs. “Not for much longer. Oh, come now, Garak, why the sour expression? Our interactions may have been brief, but I never would have put you down as one to be concerned for collateral damage. Unless you _have_ changed.”

“Somehow, I can’t imagine it would matter if I had.” 

“No,” Mara agrees. “Not for you.”

Garak is floundering. Mara presents a thousand weaknesses, of course. He is no Obsidian Order agent or esteemed leader. He’s just a man. A bitter, _old_ man, longing for vengeance. If it weren’t his life hanging in the balance just now, Garak might be tempted to side with this sad creature. He had poisoned him and left him for dead in his sister’s arms. Rathu hornet venom. Tain had never let him use it again. “You’re not the first to stage some embarrassing attempt on my life,” he remarks breathlessly, clutching at calm derision. “Not even the first since I arrived on this station.” He attempts another smile, struggling not to be distracted by the sea of ever-changing shadows, the distinct whispers in the darkness. Certain kinds of auditory and visual hallucination are common in those subjected to modest but steady doses of Rathu hornet venom. On Rathu, they even have a word for it. The madness that ensues, not necessarily fatal but damning nonetheless. 

“Perhaps not,” Mara says, “but I _will_ be the last. Your Federation friends won’t find you and your charming doctor here until you’re so rotted they could smell you on the other side of the stations.” He sneers, but all Garak is thinking of is the Romulan, and Tain, and how their twisted silhouettes were decaying like weeks-old corpses left at the mercy of maggots. 

He’s running out of options. “Whatever grudges you hold against me aside,” he says, “you’re being _used,_ Mara. It’s quite obvious. Even a child could see it. Your mysterious helper, whoever he is – do you really think he cares about your petty grievances?”

“Does it matter?” Mara wonders aloud. “So long as it helped me get to _you._ A lot of people want to see you dead, Elim Garak. I’ve been told I will receive a generous reward for removing you from the current equation.”

“And now I find out you’re nothing but a hired _thug,”_ Garak exclaims. Beneath his fingertips, Julian twitches. He barely has half an hour, an hour left at this rate of the poison’s progression. Much the same as the state Mara was in when Garak abandoned his mission that day, abandoned Mara to his unfortunate demise that never took place.

“I’m repaying a debt. The other benefits are merely additional.”

He changes courses as quickly as he can given the storm inside his skull. A tempest like no other, born of fear and pain. “Did it ever occur to you that I might be more useful to you alive than dead?”

Mara laughs again, letting go of Garak’s tunic. He slumps back down onto the floor beside Julian. “And why exactly is that?”

“You are a fool, aren’t you?” Garak snaps, letting his fear get the better of him. “I’ve been living on Deep Space 9 – or Terok Nor, if you’d prefer – for years. I work with Starfleet Intelligence to help defeat the Cardassian-Dominion union. Can you _imagine_ the kind of secrets I protect? I have information that could turn the tides of war.”

“I’m sure you’d like to think so.”

Keeping his eyes trained on Mara’s wicked expression, Garak shuffles away from the doctor’s slowly dying form, inching his way across the carpet. He pauses only to give Julian’s hand the lightest squeeze between his fingers. It aches, it hurts like a thousand hornet stings to leave him, but Garak needs space – needs room to think and breathe and decide what is real and what is not. Mara advances upon him like a killer. It’s something in the way he walks, the expression on his face. He intends murder. 

_Guilty!_ Ringing out in the room, a word spoken in Romulan. A painful as the fist against the back of Garak’s head a few minutes ago and just as lingering. A hundred people are whispering among themselves just out of his line of sight, repeating his name over and over and over as they crowd behind Makor Mara’s approach in a backdrop of coiling black. He was taught to handle the effects of many poisons in his youth, but this was not one of them. Its possible long-term effects were too dangerous. With repeated use, Rathu hornet venom permanently alters brain function. Eventually, one dies.

“I’m sorry to have missed these past few days of your life,” Mara remarks. “I was informed they would be quite… interesting. Much worse than what you managed to do to me.” He glances briefly back over to Julian. “I wonder what would happen if I told you that it was you that did it, in your madness? With a bit of coercion, of course. But this _fellow officer_ of yours…” His sneer morphs into Tain’s for a moment before Garak’s eyes. Aloof, callously delighted. “Well, he’s your doing. What, you don’t believe me?”

Garak looks up to meet Mara’s gaze. “I’m a trained spy,” he replies. “You might be interested to hear they taught us how to detect lies in the Obsidian Order.”

In the light on this side of the room, Mara looks more ghostly than anything else, his features unfixed and ever-changing, and his laugh is the only sound except for Julian’s unsteady breathing and Garak’s own heart beating in his ears. “Detected some undeniable tell, have you?” Mara asks. “Or do you simply not _want_ it to be true? That’s what he told me about you, you know – Elim Garak, abandoned his old ways to be the saviour of the Federation. How I laughed.” 

“I can’t say I’m too keen on the title myself.”

“Perhaps because it’s a lie. I don’t know you, Garak. But I do know one thing. For whatever reason, you’ve picked the losing side of this war, and it’s a pity you won’t live to see that proved true.”

Garak finds himself backed against the glass of the window. There is nowhere else to go. “I chose nothing. If Cardassia-”

“What right do you have to speak of _Cardassia,”_ Mara growls, “when every day you betray it for these Starfleet fools? No, Cardassia is not at fault for _your_ treachery.”

“I served the Obsidian Order for Cardassia. If it hadn’t occurred to you already, that means everything I did to _you,_ regrettable as it may have been, was done for the empire you seem to value so highly.” 

“I’m sure you thought it was at the time.” Mara reaches for his belt. A phaser. Garak tastes panic.

_You should have killed him when you had the chance,_ Tain says coldly.

_Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming of?_ Odo asks, melting away into the walls, the floor.

_Murderer,_ the Romulan commander’s corpse spits, so close to Garak’s ear he jumps.

“Do be quiet,” he snaps, looking over only to see more of the same shapeless black shadow. 

“Not to worry,” Mara says, “you won’t have to listen to me for much longer, now. Or anyone.” He raises his weapon. How tasteless, using a phaser. It has efficacy, of course, and cleanliness. Cruel simplicity. But really, where’s the style in a phaser blast to the head or the chest? Where’s the blood, the guts, the gore? The handsome presentation, the distinctive message behind a death?

He supposes this is just little but state-sanctioned revenge. 

“Now before you go ahead and use that… _crude_ device,” he says hurriedly, raising his voice, buying time, _“do_ consider. You may think you have powerful friends _behind you,_ but believe me when I say they have every intention of... _stabbing you in the back.”_ He could not be more obvious if he tried. Fortunately, Mara is a fool. He wouldn’t even know an emergency Starfleet-issue fire extinguisher if it hit him in the back of his head. Which it does, with a _nasty_ crack at that, far more unfortunate than the mild bruise in Garak’s skull. He watches, a smile breaking across his face despite himself, as Mara slips unconscious down to the floor. Behind him, Julian stands with the light on his face, shaking. A drop of sweat slides over the skin of his cheek. The doctor looks down at the man at his feet, crumpled unceremoniously with the phaser still clasped between his fingers.

“Happy Halloween,” Julian spits, breathing hard. The fire extinguisher hits the ground with a heavy thud. Julian follows.

Garak crawls to him, over the insignificant body between them. A little blood is oozing from the gash on the back of Mara’s head, scaled skin scraped away to stain the dark carpet. He’s not dead. Garak almost regrets it. A bit more bloodletting would not have been amiss.

“A job well done, my dear doctor,” Garak murmurs, easing Julian’s head up from the ground. His lips are pale, his eyes wide and bloodshot. 

“This has… got to stop happening, Garak,” Julian gasps.

“Now, Doctor, I’m quite sure this can only be the second or third time you’ve been involved in an attempt on my life.”

Julian turns his eyes towards Garak, brow furrowed as his body struggles against the poison choking him. “You mean there are… are times when I _haven’t_ been?”

“A conversation for another time, perhaps,” Garak replies. He carefully lays Julian back down. He needs to find help – to find out where they are on DS9, to make sure Mara was not intelligent enough to come on this doomed mission alone. He pries the phaser from Mara’s limp hand, just to be safe.

“Garak… wait up a minute.”

He pauses.

“Yes, Doctor?”

Julian blinks slowly, as if struggling to make out Garak in the shadows. “You said you-” He breaks off to demand air again, tilting his chin towards the ceiling. The sound of his suffocating turns Garak’s stomach inside out. “That _I_ died. In your dream.”

Garak opens his mouth to reply, but cannot find the words.

“I just thought it was- it was funny,” Julian chokes out. “You died in mine.” The corner of his mouth twitches, an almost smile. “I need… epinixamine,”he adds, voice barely there for breathlessness. “50 ccs.”

But Garak has none to give.

He acts on autopilot. There is a deactivated computer display by the door on the other side of the room, this strange little room in an abandoned corner of Deep Space 9. Dormant. People peering over his shoulder as he works, his hands shaking. Their whispers are softer now, more bearable. He goes through the motions, entering Julian’s access codes that he memorised long ago, watching a piece of technology long ignored be brought back to life. It chirps, a distinct sound in the silence. 

“Garak to… to Lieutenant Dax.”

_“Ezri here. Garak, what’s…”_

But the rest of her words fade away into the storm. Garak slides to his knees by the door. Julian is a weakly shuddering shadow, a silhouette before the light of stars. _Real._ He has to believe it. _All entirely real._ It’s a rather harrowing final thought to think as the room melts down to a navy river, sweeping Garak along downstream.

*

“What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Garak answers, honestly.

“What were you looking at, then?”

He looks into Ezri’s eyes – hardly like her symbiont’s last host’s yet just as knowing – and then looks away. He does hate the Infirmary. It’s stark and bare and bright. Nothing is comforting about its sterility. When the lights are dimmed in the quiet hours the night nurses seem to move about like spirits, floating around with sedate expressions, silent. 

“I wish you had told me the truth,” she says. “Or, that you’d felt comfortable enough to. I know you and me, Garak, haven’t known each other for so long, and even when I was Jadzia- well, when Jadzia was Jadzia, you weren’t close, but-”

“It’s quite all right, my dear,” he interrupts. _”I_ am quite all right.”

“I know it’s all all right,” she replies. “For now. But now isn’t forever.” She crosses her arms, a flicker of a smile breaking through the tired melancholy on her face. “I need you to help yourself first.”

He sighs, reclining back on his Infirmary bed and casting a random glance at the vitals display beside him. It seems he is still alive. “I _am_ trying.”

“I know you are,” she says firmly. “I know that truth is difficult. But it’s as they say, you know…” She gives a small laugh. “It’ll set you free.”

“On this occasion, I fear the truth might have saved us some deal of bother.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s your fault for not realising some madman had decided to smuggle himself onto the station, trap you in a turbolift and attempt to murder you in an unused meeting room," she points out.

“He wasn’t mad,” Garak says. “He was, however, unfortunately foolish.”

“He underestimated the power of Julian in a bad mood.”

Garak smiles too, despite the heavy weight pressing down somewhere in the centre of his chest as he lies there, despite the fact he feels too tired to smile. “Yes. He did, rather.”

Colonel Kira comes around the corner in a blur of dark red, shoulders squared. It looks as if everyone’s coming to visit today. He’s already suffered through Odo’s interrogations and Sisko’s polite condolences. These things _do_ seem to keep happening to Elim Garak, after all. It borders on the comedic. 

“How are you feeling?” Kira asks shortly.

“Oh, I’m quite recovered,” he answers. “I can’t say I’m truly sure why I’m still here at all.”

“Julian says you’re not to leave for at least another day,” Ezri reminds him. “Until all the poison is out of your system.”

“Speaking on that subject,” Kira says. “We’ve apprehended a pair of Ack-Vandrish mercenaries we’re almost certain were responsible for administering doses of Rathu hornet venom to you daily for the past week or so, from what Julian’s tests say, at least. The same syndicate members were likely also the ones who smuggled Makor Mara from Cardassia to Deep Space 9, but it’s too early to say. If so, they probably helped to locate and gas the turbolift so Mara could get to you.”

“How charming,” Garak remarks.

Kira grimaces. “That’s not the end of it. I came to let you know that Mara has provided us with a confession under Odo's questioning. He _claims_ that his mysterious benefactor was _Dukat.”_ Beside her, Ezri winces. Garak sees the memories flitter across her face, little fireflies that come and go in blinks of light. “There’s a good chance he’s telling the truth.”

“So much for Dukat’s _charitable_ new character,” Garak comments.

“I don’t think he ever intended on extending his charity to you,” Kira replies, and Garak sees her gaze dart subtly in Ezri’s direction. The counsellor's face is firm. He sighs and considers the possibility. Even before his questionable awakening of the spirit, Dukat’s charity was indeed a decided practice. Very few ever received it, and it always came at a cost. 

“You may be right, Colonel,” he says.

“What about the ship that brought him here?” Ezri asks. “I mean, how did he make it onto the station without being detected? And _surely_ he must’ve known the malfunctioning turbolift would be picked up on within minutes, and that people would looking for you. He can’t have expected to kill you and escape altogether Deep Space 9 without being caught.”

“I don’t believe he had thought that far ahead,” Garak answers. “Not a very talented killer. Or a very coherent one, I have to say, having heard the man speak.”

Ezri looks as though she’s fighting with herself not to smile. “For my first proper Halloween, you certainly gave me the fright of my life. I almost tripped over trying to get to Benjamin in my ghost costume after I got your call.”

“Can I tell the captain you’re feeling better?” Kira asks. “He’ll want to speak with you after shift today.”

He inclines his head. “You may. Thank you, Colonel.”

Kira nods back and murmurs a goodbye to Ezri before she turns and leaves the room, crimson boots carrying her beyond once more unto the breach. Garak watches her go, repressing the urge to defy his orders and get up and follow. His fingers itch to aid the Constable in his current investigation, to ease the ever-present anxiety under his tongue and manage the creeping sensation that something else looms in shadow. _In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger._

_Once more unto the breach._

He inhales a steady lungful of air. 

“What are you thinking about?” Ezri questions. 

“Oh, nothing important.”

“If you say so.” She sighs. “I have a meeting in ten. I’ll stop by later and we can talk some more?”

He opens his mouth to bite back something about not needing to be mothered or fussed over like a sick child but closes it again a moment later. The young counsellor of Deep Space 9 wears her smile honestly, and she cares. Even if perhaps she shouldn’t, she does. “Until then, my dear.”

When she is gone, Garak is left alone in the Infirmary room. He can hear the ticks and buzzes of machines, the sound of distant voices that could be real, and yet he thinks not. Distant voices in his mind – memories, fears, Halloween decorations and Julian’s face with somebody else’s eyes.

“Well, how’s my patient?”

“Completely and utterly _fine,_ my dear doctor,” he says, turning to look up at Julian as he enters, dressed now in his era-appropriate Starfleet uniform and looking far less close to death. He’s been up and on his feet since four hours after being poisoned by Rathu hornet venom, because of course he has. No one ever tells a Chief Medical Officer to _lie down,_ even if he was quite recently close to a painful and sudden death. “Which only begs the question as to _why_ I am still lying here while _you_ are not.”

“I’m better,” Julian says, picking up a PADD from the nearby desk. “You’re still on bed rest for at least twelve hours.”

“Hm, so you say.” Julian turns away again and then the words are slipping between Garak’s lips before he can prevent them – quick, uncharacteristic, uncertain. “Doctor, I must-”

Julian holds up his hand, and Garak falls silent. “We have… a lot to talk about, Garak. At least, I think we do. But right now, you need _sleep.”_ He smiles. “But maybe lunch tomorrow? The replimat, unless you’d rather help work through the Halloween leftovers. Ezri refuses to go near any of it.”

“The replimat would be _more_ than satisfactory,” Garak says firmly. 

“All right,” Julian says, pausing a moment to smile down at him fondly, his head encircled by the bright white of the overhead lights. He looks tired. But then, they all are, in war. Julian wears recent attempted murder and poisoning well. His strange resilience reveals itself in the way he holds himself now, shoulders back, for once still and at ease. He tilts his chin, wearing his _I’m pretending to think very hard about this._ “How many more people trying to kill you are we going to have to go through,” he remarks, “before we finally run out, I wonder.” 

“I’m afraid there may be some out there to deal with yet.”

“And we’ll deal with them together,” Julian promises. “But right now I have work to do. I’ll be just next door if you need anything. Try to get some sleep, hm?”

“Your wish is my command, Doctor.”

Julian smiles again, a brief interim between the shadows. And even when he walks away, his presence lingers. 

_You were brilliant,_ comes a whisper from the corner, but Garak does not look. He lies back and closes his eyes. Julian is giving instructions to the computer in the next room, his voice carrying clear and calm in the quiet of the Infirmary late in the afternoon. There is room to breathe in here. At least just for now, there is room to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Participating in this event was a real joy, thanks so much to the organiser, and to my fellow participants for their conversation and their supporting me through my first watch of Hannibal S3 in the server (can you tell I've been watching that show from this fic I wonder, dsjksjksk). Also, shocking how many similes and metaphors I managed to jam into this one. I'm out of control.
> 
> Thank you for reading, kudos and comments are appreciated as always!
> 
> \- cami xx


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